
MEN' OFIETTERS^AND'PQi 



TOGETHER, with;!! I !i 



\ 'CENTENARY- Ml 



ROINE 



1 











Book ' ■!_ 




-iy^'^^u^U i^Oiyh^ ^,v^ *'^o..^re<o-@(^iA: 



Xincoln XTnbute Book 

appreciations b^ Statesmen 

^en ot ^Letters, anD poets 

at Ibome anD BbroaD 



Uogetber wftb 

H Xincoln Gcntcnav^ /IDebal 

from tbe Second Design ma6e for tbe ©ccasion bj 

IRoine 



JEiiteb b? 

Iboratio Sbeafe Ikrans 



(5. p. Putnam's Sons 

•ftcw ISorh an^ lon&on 

Ube ftnickerbocfiet fl)tess 

1909 



\<n 



LIBRARY of 00?!Gn£SS 
Two Copies Received 

l-tB 6 W9 

Copyngnt Entry ^ 
CLASS Ql. ^Xc* No. 



Copyright, igog 

BY 

ROBERT HEWITT 



tCbe ftnCcfterbocfcet |>re«0, flew Ifforft 



preface 

THIS little book, including a full-face Lincoln 
medal from a design made for the occasion 
by the French medallist Jules Edouard Roin6. 
is offered as a fitting souvenir of the centenary 
of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. That many 
were eager to possess themselves of such a sou- 
venir was made plain to the publishers of this 
volume when they brought out, toward the 
close of last year. The Lincoln Centennial 
Medal, which, in the midst of appropriate text, 
presented a larger Roinc medal on which the 
President is represented in profile. That book 
—it appeared late last year— was published in 
three editions, one containing bronze medals, 
the second silver medals, and the third a 
gold medal, struck, all of them, from dies 
made from a design by Roine. These three 
editions were more or less costly, and, as 
February 12th was fixed as the date for 



iv preface 

the cancellation of the dies, likely to appre- 
ciate in value. More than this the silver- 
medal edition, limited to one hundred copies, 
was taken up rapidly, and was soon selling at 
twice, or more than twice, its original price. 

The present volume, with the full-face 
medal, is offered at a modest cost that should 
bring it easily within the reach of all lovers 
of Lincoln and collectors of Lincolniana. 

Two reasons for its existence this book 
begs to advance: in the first place it brings 
together from widely scattered sources splen- 
did and richly deserved tributes from states- 
men, men of letters, and poets at home and 
abroad to Abraham Lincoln, whom all Ameri- 
cans now count a chief glory of his country, 
and who will have — who can doubt it? — in 
coming time the unmeasured love, not of his 
compatriots alone, but of men of good will all 
the world over; and, in the second place, it 
presents the Roin6 medal commemorative of 
the Centenary, For the rest, it makes no 
pretences. 

In the pages that follow something is said 



preface v 

of M. Rom6 to whose accomplished art we owe 
the designs of the full-face medal contained 
in the present volume, and of the medal itself. 
Here, in this prefatory word, it is but right to 
say that the gratitude of those who have found 
pleasure in the two beautiful Roine medals is 
due to Mr. Robert Hewitt of Ardsley-on- 
Hudson, whose unrivalled collection of Lincoln 
medals has made him known to numismatists 
and collectors of Lincolniana everywhere. It 
was at his instance that both these medals 
were designed and struck. 

In addition to what has been referred to 
above this volume contains a brief running 
commentary on the selected tributes to our 
great War President, which may perhaps be 
found acceptable on the score of the inform- 
ation given regarding the sources of the quo- 
tations and other matters. 

The editor is glad of this opportunity to 
thank cordially Mr. George Haven Putnam 
for kind suggestions which his knowledge of 
Lincoln and Lincolniana have made especially 
valuable. He wishes also to give his cordial 



vi preface 

thanks to Mr. Roland Clinton for all kinds of 
effective help. 

To the publishers who have kindly permit- 
ted the use of material from their publica- 
tions specific acknowledgment is made in 
connection with each quotation. 

H. S. K. 

New York, 

January 9, 1909. 



Contents 

PAGE 

I. — The Artist i 

II. — The History of the Medal . 7 

III. — Tributes to Lincoln . . 13 



•ffllustrattons 

Page 
Abraham Lincoln . . Frontispiece 

From the photograph by Rice. Copyright. 
1 90 1, by Gilbo & Co. 

The Lincoln Centennial Medal — 

Obverse ..... 2 

The Lincoln Centennial Medal — 

Reverse a 



'* flow be belongs to tbe Bqcs '* 

Edwin M. Stanton 



I 

XLbe Hrtist 




THE LINCOLN CENTENNIAL MhUAL — OBVERSE 
DESIGNED BY ROINE 



I 

Ubc Uvtist 

lULES EDOUARD ROINE, the designer of 
the medal presented herewith, was born 
at Chantenay sur Loire, in 1857, and, while 
still a young man, became a student of Leopold 
Maurice at Paris. He early became known 
in France as an accomplished artist, but 
it was not until, in 1900, he was honored 
with a gold medal at the Paris Exposition 
for his plaque, "Aurora of the Twentieth 
Century," that his reputation spread widely 
beyond the borders of his own country. 
M. Roin^ is both sculptor and medallist. 
He is represented by various works at the 
Luxembourg Museum in Paris, at the Mus^e 
de Troyes, at the Imperial Museum in BerHn, 
at the Metropolitan Museum in this city, and 
in other pubHc collections, and, also, by 
many works in the possession of private 
collectors. He was, too, it may be added, 
3 



4 Ubc ^Lincoln tribute JBooft 

a member of the jury for the Paris Exposition. 
Among his more important statues must be 
mentioned that of St. Louis, designed for 
the St. Louis Exposition. 

Roin6's latest work is the full-face medal 
presented in this volume; the work imme- 
diately preceding it was the Lincoln Centen- 
nial Medal alluded to in the preface, upon the 
obverse of which the President's head is seen 
in profile. The illustrations on pages 2 and 4 
represent the two sides of the profile medal, 
the rare artistic quality of which has been 
everywhere recognized. 

The original design of it is to become the 
property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
in this city, which, by its acceptance of the 
gift — it was offered by Mr. Robert Hewitt — 
has set the seal of its approval upon a work 
the excellence of which must be apparent to 
anyone with the least sensibility to beauty. 
How subtle and fine the modelling of the face, 
which reveals the dignity and weight, the 
tenderness, sweetness, and strength, the 
depth and the varied richness of the nature 




THE LINCOLN CENTENNIAL MEDAL— REVERSE 



;rbe Brtfst 5 

of him whom it so finely represents; how 
beautifully, too, the branch of palm and 
the clustered oak leaves are designed; how 
graceful in their arrangement and relation are 
the lines forming the letters that compose the 
words of the inscriptions; and, indeed, how 
choice, how admirably selected, how har- 
monious are all the details which combine 
to form this little masterpiece of finished art, 
which in its grave and simple beauty is a 
worthy tribute to the man whose memory 
has become one of the world's precious 
possessions. 



Z\)c Ibtetor? of tbe flDebal 



II 

Ube 1bt0totp of tbe /iDebal 

T N making the design for the work here pre- 
sented, M. Roine well knew that he was 
confronted with the medallist's most difficult 
problem. An easier success would have been 
won by producing a medal representing the 
subject in profile, or as turned well toward 
the observer. But in this case the artist 
faced all difficulties, and, to our thinking, 
successfully overcame them. 

When designing this commanding and im- 
pressive head, it was clearly with the heroic 
aspect of Lincoln's character that the de- 
signer was preoccupied. But in making this 
aspect dominate the whole conception, the 
artist has never descended to the half truth 
of mere grandiosity. There is no unfaith- 
fulness to reality, no compromise with the 
9 



lo XLbe Xlncoln Q:ril?utc 3Bool; 

facts of the physiognomy, no blinking of the 
gaunt and homely features. The Lincoln 
whom this medal brings before us is Lincoln 
when he was most himself, Lincoln roused at 
last and standing forth as the champion of 
the great causes which were ever nearest his 
heart. Over the plainness of the countenance 
is cast the something that, as a host of those 
who knew him bear witness, often glorified it 
and banished from it every suggestion of 
the rude or uncouth. 

A word as to the history of the medal in- 
cluded in this volume may not be found amiss 
here. The large design from which it was 
made was first moulded in wax. From this 
design a medallion, 120 millimetres in dia- 
meter, was cast in bronze. It was from this 
bronze medallion that the dies were cut from 
which our medal was made. 

Those unacquainted with the methods of 
medallists who do their work in accordance 
with the dictates of an exacting artistic con- 
science will perhaps be surprised at the long 
and careful study and reflection, the brooding 



^be Iblstoris of the ^eDal 1 1 

care, the imaginative transformation of raw 
materials, which condition the creation of a 
medal like that bound into the present volume. 
In the case of this medal, the artist based 
his representation upon what are now the 
most authoritative sources — the life and death 
masks of Lincoln. Next came a study of the 
photographs of the President — literal and 
faithful, if incomplete and imperfect, records 
of what he was in his outward man. After 
this followed the study of the counterfeit 
presentments of him which had been made 
by brother artists — painters, engravers, and 
sculptors. While attending to these matters, 
it was also necessary for the designer to come 
to a sympathetic understanding of the char- 
, acter of Lincoln as it is presented in history 
and biography. And then, with all this by 
way of preliminary preparation, it remained 
for the artist to form his own conception, 
to embody it in the plaster design, and to 
have this reproduced in reduced facsimile 
as described above. 



Ill 

^ributea to Xincoln 



13 



Ill 

Urtbutes to Xtncoln 

A LL nations love to commemorate their 
national heroes, and set apart days for 
the purpose. Nor could the patriotic spirit 
exercise itself to better advantage. For what 
can profit a people more than to fix its atten- 
tion at recurring seasons upon some one of 
those — and among such Abraham Lincoln 
must be counted — who approach an ideal 
humanity to the semblance of which the 
average man seeks in vain to bring himself. 
Among the rulers in the annals of the 
race none has left a more spotless record 
than our great President, and none has 
shown a more heroic spirit or a nobler 
temper. 

15 



i6 XLbc Xincoln tribute JSooft 

The Centenary, which will be observed on 
■the twelfth of February, 1909, is no ordinary 
occasion, and the commemoration of it will 
properly be a matter of national and public, 
as well as local and private, concern, in which 
North and South will alike participate. And 
this commemoration, now that Lincoln's 
character and purposes are known to all, can 
hardly arouse, even in the South, a bitter 
thought. And, if there be those who do not 
now sympathize with the cause Lincoln cham- 
pioned, they can at least, with a whole heart, 
join in honoring a noble compatriot for his 
garland of splendid human qualities — his high 
courage, his love of truth and justice, his in- 
exhaustible patience, his unconfinable toler- 
ance of all honest convictions, his all-embracing 
charity, and, as the flower of them all, a 
magnanimity that stifled personal antipa- 
thies, left insults and injuries unregarded, 
abjured malice and uncharitableness, and 
forgot itself in impassioned love of a noble 
cause. 

For the contemplation of Lincoln's life 



ZiiWtce to Xfncoln 17 

and character this Centenary is a fitting oc- 
casion, and it is as material for such a con- 
templation that the following tributes have 
here been assembled. They have been 
offered, many of them, by those who per- 
sonally knew and loved the man; some by 
those who have brooded to good purpose upon 
the story of his life and the nature of his 
achievements; and others by sworn enemies 
of all the principles for which he stood. The 
perusal of them may bring home afresh to 
the reader what manner of man Lincoln was, 
and leave him with a lively sense of the many- 
sided greatness of this national hero, of his 
rich and genial humanity, and of those inti- 
mate, personal, and peculiar qualities and 
idiosyncrasies that combined to constitute 
his individuality. 

The arrangement of the tributes that follow 
is chronological — though, for one reason or 
another, there is an occasional departure from 
this plan — chronological that is, in the sense 
that those which apply to his boyhood come 
first, those which apply to his later life being 



i8 dbc Xincoln c;ribute 3Booft 

arranged in the order of time. The place 
they occupy in this volume is not determined 
by the moment at which they were, each of 
them, uttered. 



J INCOLN early showed himself a lad of 
promise. As a boy in the little back- 
woods-school he made his mark, as he was 
later to do wherever his lot was cast, until, 
finally, the highest honors in the gift of his 
countrymen were proffered him, and he took 
a commanding position in the great world of 
affairs. In an account of Lincoln's school 
days, included in the biography by Herndon 
and Weik, his school-fellow, Nat Grigsby, 
tells of juvenile distinctions: 

A LAD OF PROMISE 

" He was always at school early and attended 
to his studies. He was always at the head of 
his class, and passed us rapidly in his studies. 
He lost no time at home, and when he was not 
at work was at his books. He kept to his 
studies on Sunday, and carried his books with 
19 



20 ^be Xincoln tribute :©ooh 

him to work, so that he might read when he 

rested from labor." 

Hcrndon's Lincoln, by WilHam H. Herndon 
and Jesse W. Weik, vol. i., p. 32, New York, 
I goS. Reprinted by permission of D, Appleton 
& Company, 

From William O. Stoddard, also, we hear 
how the boy seized time by the forelock, and 
made the most of his opportunities: Here is 
a quaint biographical item: 

"He was acknowledged to be the leader of 
the school in the matter of putting together 
the right letters to make up a word. He 
became, in fact, a sort of good-natured walk- 
ing dictionary for the rest, and it was at 
times needful to turn so willing a prompter 
out of doors during contested matches or 
perplexing recitations." 

Abraham Lincoln, by William O. Stoddard, 
p. 43, New York, 1884. 

His zeal for learning, Carl Schurz tells us, 
was the wonder of his kinsfolk and acquaint- 



UviMtce to Xlncoln 21 

"When a mere boy he had to help in sup- 
porting the family, either on his father's clear- 
ing, or hired out to other farmers to plough, 
or dig ditches, or chop wood, or drive ox teams ; 
occasionally also to "tend the baby," when 
the farmer's wife was otherwise engaged. He 
could regard it as an advancement to a higher 
sphere of activity when he obtained work in 
a 'crossroads store,' where he amused the 
customers by his talk over the counter; for 
he soon distinguished himself among the 
back-woods folk as one who had something 
to say worth listening to. To win that dis- 
tinction, he had to draw mainly upon his 
wits; for, while his thirst for knowledge was 
great, his opportunities for satisfying that 
thirst were wofully slender. 

" In the log schoolhouse, which he could visit 
but little, he was taught only reading, writing, 
and elementary arithmetic. Among the peo- 
ple of the settlement, bush farmers and small 
tradesmen, he found none of uncommon intel- 
ligence or education; but some of them had a 
few books, which he borrowed eagerly. Thus 



22 ^be Xincoln tribute JBook 

he read and reread ^ sop's Fables, learning to 
tell stories with a point and to argue by para- 
bles; he read Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's 
Progress, a short history of the United States, 
and Weems's Life of Washington. To the 
town constable's he went to read the Revised 
Statutes of Indiana. Every printed page 
that fell into his hands he would greedily de- 
vour, and his family and friends watched him 
with wonder, as the uncouth boy, after his 
daily work, crouched in a corner of the log 
cabin or outside under a tree, absorbed in 
a book while munching his supper of corn 
bread." 

From Carl Schurz's Abraham Lincoln, re- 
printed, with the permission of the author 
and Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 
in The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, vol, ii., 
pp. 6-7, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 
1905. 

Let those for whom the abstracted dreamer 
is necessarily the unpractical idler consider 
Lincoln and revise their opinions. Mr. Wil- 
liam H. Herndon, who was for twenty-five 



CrlDutes to Xincoln 23 

years Mr. Lincoln's law partner, cherished no 
such illusion, witness the following passage : 

LINCOLN THE DREAMER 

"Although imbued with a marked dislike 

for manual labor, it cannot be truthfully said 

of him that he was indolent. From a mental 

standpoint he was one of the most energetic 

young men of his day. He dwelt altogether 

in the land of thought. His deep meditation 

and abstraction easily induced the behef 

among his horny-handed companions that 

he was lazy. ..." 

Herndon's Lincoln, vol. i., p. 39. Reprinted 
by permission of D. Appleton & Company. 

In the shaping of character environment is 
a master force, in general more potent even 
than heredity. The following passage, ad- 
mirably concise and comprehensive, indicates 
at how many points Lincoln's early surround- 
ings moulded the fine, firm, and strong fibre 
of his nature. It is from the pen of John G. 
Nicolay who was intimately associated with 



24 Zbc Xlncoln tiributc asool? 

Lincoln, for a time his private secretary, and 
ever his faithful friend. 

THE MAKING OF A HERO 

" We see how even the limitations of his en- 
vironment helped the end. Self-reliance, that 
most vital characteristic of the pioneer, was 
his by blood and birth and training; and de- 
veloped through the privations of his lot and 
the genius that was in him to the mighty 
strength needed to guide our great country 
through the titanic struggle of the Civil War. 

' ' The sense of equality was his , also by virtue 
of his pioneer training — a consciousness fos- 
tered by life from childhood to manhood in a 
state of society where there were neither rich 
to envy nor poor to despise, where the gifts 
and hardships of the forest were distributed 
impartially to each, and where men stood 
indeed equal before the forces of unsubdued 
nature. 

"The same great forces taught liberality, 
modesty, charity, sympathy — in a word, 
neighborliness. In that hard life, far re- 



tributes to Xincoln 25 

moved from the artificial aids and comforts 
of civilization, where all the wealth of Croe- 
sus, had a man possessed it, would not have 
sufficed to purchase relief from danger, or 
help in time of need, neighborliness became of 
prime importance. A good neighbor doubled 
his safety and resources, a group of good 
neighbors increased his comfort and his pros- 
pects in a ratio that grew like the cube foot. 
Here was opportunity to practise that virtue 
that Christ declared to be next to the love of 
God — the fruitful injunction to 'love thy 
neighbor as thyself.' " 

A Short Life of Abraham Liitcoln, by John 
G. Nicolay, pp. 549-550, The Century Com- 
pany, New York, 1904. 

A deep melancholy underlay the surface of 
Lincoln's nature, but only at moments was it 
overwhelming. For all the labor, the stress, 
and the strain of his life, there were in it many 
happy hours when he keenly felt the joy of 
living, and took a humorous delight in all 
the homely world about him. 



26 Zbc Xlncoln tribute JBool{ 

THE ZEST OF LIVING 

" There was much that was irritating and 
uncomfortable in the circuit-riding of the 
Illinois court, but there w-as more which was 
amusing to a temperament like Lincoln's. 
The freedom, the long days in the open air, 
the unexpected if trivial adventures, the 
meeting with wayfarers and settlers — all was 
an entertainment to him. He found humor 
and human interest on the route where his 
companions saw nothing but commonplaces. 
'He saw the ludicrous in an assemblage of 
fowls,' says H. C. Whitney, one of his fellow 
itinerants, 'in a man spading his garden, 
in a clothes-line full of clothes, in a group of 
boys, in a lot of pigs rooting at a mill door, 
in a mother duck teaching her brood to swim — 
in everything and anything.' The sym- 
pathetic observations of these long rides fur- 
nished humorous settings to some of his best 
stories. If frequently on these trips he fell 
into sombre reveries and rode with head bent 
down, ignoring his companions, generally he 



^rtbutea to Xincolu 27 

took part in all the frolicking which went on, 
joining in practical jokes, singing noisily with 
the rest, and sometimes even playing a Jew's- 
harp." 

The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Ida M. 
Tarbell, vol. i., p. 242, Doubleday, Page & 
Company, New York, 1899. 

Lincoln's power as a lawyer was not that of 
a man profoundly versed in his subject. It 
was not, for example, that of Judge Logan, 
for some time senior partner, who was credited 
with rereading his Blackstone each year from 
cover to cover. It was not so much a know- 
ledge of law as a grasp of fundamental justice 
and an abihty to apply its principles to each 
case as it was presented to him. This he 
sought, knowing well that, could he find it, 
and state it so simply that the average juror 
could grasp it, the latter would recognize its 
power and give his verdict in harmony with it. 
That he was particularly keen in its discovery 
and happy in presenting it to the minds of his 
readers is the universal verdict of his asso- 
ciates. Judge David Davis, Lincoln's ardent 



28 {Tbe Xincoln llrtbute JBooft 

and devoted friend (whose partiality by the 
way, would have spoiled most lawyers, though 
Lincoln would take no unfair advantage of it), 
dwells in his eulogy of Lincoln on this instinct 
for equity. He says: 

LINCOLN AS A REASONER 

" In all the elements that constituted a law- 
yer, he had few equals. He was great at nisi 
pritis and before an appellate tribunal. 

" He seized the strong points of a cause and 
presented them with clearness and great com- 
pactness. His mind was logical and direct, 
and he did not indulge in extraneous discus- 
sion. Generalities and platitudes had no 
charm for him. An unfailing vein of humor 
never deserted him, and he was able to claim 
the attention of court and jury when the cause 
was most uninteresting by the appropriateness 
of his anecdotes. . . . 

"The framework of his mental and moral 
being was honesty, and a wrong case vras 
poorly defended by him. In order to bring 



tributes to Xtncoln 29 

into full activity his great powers, it was neces- 
sary that he should be convinced of the right 
and justice of the matter which he advocated. 
When so convinced, whether the cause was 
great or small, he was usually successful." 

Eulogy delivered by Judge David Davis at a 
meeting of the Bar at Indianapolis, May, 1865. 

It is to Lincoln's magnetic personality, to 
the impression of honesty that he created in 
the minds of all who saw and heard him, to 
his strong logic and trenchant simplicity of 
statement that Mr. Frederick Trevor Hill 
attributes his success as a lawyer rather than 
to a masterly technical and detailed knowledge 
of legal subtleties. The qualities that Lin- 
coln possessed in a very high degree were those 
most at a premium in the environment in which 
he found himself. 

THE SECRET OF LINCOLN'S LEGAL 
SUCCESS 

" His natural perceptions were too keen, his 
mind too generously catholic, to admit of the 
discipline enforced by the usual legal training. 



30 Zbc ILincoIn (Tribute JBook 

Education of that sort would probably have 
warped his natural talents, and the result 
might have been a conscientious family so- 
licitor instead of the great adviser of a nation. 
He needed the freedom of an office innocent 
of patent letter-files and card-catalogue in- 
dices to develop his individuality; he de- 
manded the growing room of a new country 
where the practice of the law was not con- 
ventionalized out of all meaning and forms 
did not restrict ; he required the self-discipline 
which comes of personal unguided effort and, 
unhandicapped competition; and he found 
the requisite conditions in his free-and-easy 
association with Major Stuart. 

"The independence and responsibility which 
he experienced in this partnership allowed 
him to exercise and express his individuality 
at a time when stricter discipline and more 
technical teaching would have fretted him or 
moulded his maturing mind in a different 
fashion. 

"As it was, he developed naturally into 
a broad-minded counsellor who reverenced 



tributes to Ufncoln 31 

the law without worshipping it, and whose 
sense of justice was not dulled by contact 
with unyielding precedents. 

" If Stewart had been ambitious to accum- 
ulate a fortune, he would have been disap- 
pointed with his partner; for, with a people 
as litigious as the early Illinois settlers, it was 
a simple matter to stir up strife and make work 
for the lawyer, and Lincoln, instead of egging 
clients into the courts, set his face against 
such practice. 'Discourage litigation,' was 
his advice to lawyers. ' Persuade your neigh- 
bors to compromise whenever you can. 
Point out to them how the nominal winner 
is often the real loser — in fees, expenses, and 
waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer 
has a superior opportunity of becoming a good 
man. There will always be enough business. 
Never stir up litigation, A worse man can 
scarcely be found than one who does this. 
Who can more nearly be a fiend than he who 
habitually overhauls the register of deeds in 
search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up 
strife and put money in his pocket ? A moral 



32 XLbc Xtncoln tribute :©ooI; 

tone ought to be infused into the profession 

which should drive such men out of it.' 

"It has been truly said that these words 

should be posted in every lawoffice in the land." 

Lincoln the Lawyer, by Frederick Trevor 
Hill, pp. 101-103, The Century Company, 
New York, 1906. 

Over a thousand obstacles Lincoln fought 
his way to success as a lawyer, and regarding 
the secret of this success, Mr. Joseph H. 
Choate's view seems substantially at one 
with Mr. Hill's. 

NATURAL JUSTICE AND LAW 

" My brethren of the legal profession will 
naturally ask me, how could this rough back- 
woodsman, whose youth had been spent in the 
forest or on the farm and the fiatboat, with- 
out culture or training, education or study, 
by the random reading, on the wing, of a 
few miscellaneous law books, become a learned 
and accomplished lawyer? Well, he never 
did. He never would have earned his salt 
as a Writer for the Signet, nor have won a 



tributes to Xincoln 33 

place as advocate in the Court of Session, 
where the technique of the profession has 
reached its highest perfection, and centuries 
of learning and precedent are involved in the 
equipment of a lawyer. . . . 

" The lawsuits of those days were extremely 
simple, and the principles of natural justice 
were mainly relied on to dispose of them at 
the Bar and on the Bench, without resort to 
technical learning. . . . 

" But his logic was invincible, and his clear- 
ness and force of statement impressed upon 
his hearers the convictions of his honest mind, 
while his broad sympathies and sparkling and 
genial humor made him a universal favorite as 
far and as fast as his acquaintance extended." 

Reprinted, with the permission of the 
author and Messrs. T. Y. Crowell & Company, 
from The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 
i., pp. 88-90, New York, 1905. 



While Judge Davis dealt chiefly, in the pas- 
sage we quoted from him, with the power of 
his reason, J. G. Holland shows the other side, 
3 



34 ^be Lincoln ^rtbute JBooft 

his clearness of expression and trenchancy of 
statement : 



LINCOLN BEFORE A JURY 

" While Mr. Lincoln was not regarded by his 
professional associates as profoundly versed 
in the principles of law, he was looked upon 
by them as a very remarkable advocate. No 
man in Illinois had such power before a jury as 
he. This was a fact universally admitted. 
The elements of his power as an advocate were 
perfect lucidity of statement, great fairness 
in the treatment of both sides of a case, and 
the skill to conduct a common mind along the 
chain of his logic to his own conclusion. In 
I)resenting a case to a jury, he invariably pre- 
sented both sides of it. After he had done 
this, there was really little more to be said, 
for he could generally state the points of his 
opponent better than his opponent could state 
them for himself. The man who followed him 
usually found himself handling that which 



Zti\)ntc6 to Xincoln 35 

Mr. Lincoln had already reduced to chaff. 
" There was really no trick about this. In 
the first place, he would not take a case in 
which he did not believe he was on the side of 
justice. Believing that the right was with 
him, he felt that he could afford to give the 
opposing counsel everything that he could 
claim, and still have material enough left for 
carrying his verdict. His fairness was not 
only apparent but real, and the juries he ad- 
dressed knew it to be so. He would stand 
before a jury and yield point after point that 
nearly every other lawyer would dispute under 
the same circumstances, so that, sometimes, 
his clients trembled with apprehension; and 
then, after he had given his opponent all he 
claimed, and more than he had dared to claim, 
he would state his own side of the case with 
such power and clearness that that which had 
seemed strong against him was reduced to 
weakness, that which had seemed to be sound 
was proved to be specious, and that which had 
the appearance of being conclusive against him 
was plainly seen to be corroborative of his own 



36 Cbc ^Lincoln ^rtbute SBook 

positions on the question to be decided." 

The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by J. G. 
Holland, pp. 78-80, Springfield, Mass., 1866. 

The rare faculty of reducing subjects — legal 
or other — of the most baffling complexity to 
their simplest terms and stating them in the 
most lucid and forceful way was in a pre- 
eminent degree an element of Lincoln's genius. 
Of a famous instance of the exercise of the fac- 
ulty referred to, Mr. Frederick Trevor Hill says : 

GIFT FOR LUCID STATEMENT 

*• Again with quieting firmness he handled 
the Dred Scott case, the Fugitive Slave Law, 
and the other legal questions in dispute, di- 
vesting them of all technicalities and disre- 
garding their complicated refinements until 
he reached the real issues and showed that all 
the points in controversy could be adjusted 
by well recognized principles of law. In a 
word, he placed the secessionists for the first 
time on the defensive, appealed to the deep 
and law-abiding sentiment of the American 
people, and afforded the supporters of the 



Zxibntce to Xincoln 37 

Union a firm, legal foothold. He knew the 
moral effect of a legal authority which the peo- 
ple could understand, and the importance of 
his clear, prompt announcement can not be 
overestimated." 

Lincoln the Lawyer, by Frederick Trevor 
Hill, pp. 296-297, The Century Company, 
New York, 1906. 

Of the difficult art of cross-examination, 
Lincoln was a masterly practitioner, and 
some sort of psychic power seemed to aid 
him here as elsewhere. Such is Mr. Frederick 
Trevor Hill's opinion. From his book, a work 
of prime interest to the lawyer in particular, 
and in general to the general public, we take 
the following passage that bears upon what 
we have just said: 

PSYCHIC POWER AND CROSS- 
EXAMINATION 

" Cross-examination makes greater demands 
upon a lawyer than any other phase of trial 
work, and it has been rightly termed an art. 
To succeed in it the practitioner must be 



38 XLbe %inco\n c:rlbutc JSooft 

. . . far-sighted, tactful, and a keen judge of 
human nature. All these qualities Lincoln 
possessed to an unusual degree, and, in addi- 
tion, he exerted a remarkable personal in- 
fluence upon every one with whom he came 
into contact. Men who were openly opposed 
to him became fascinated when they met 
him, and few ever retained their hostility. . . , 
" He was direct, simple, and unaffectedly 
frank, and the conclusion is irresistible that 
he was endowed with psychic qualities of 
extraordinary power. More than one man 
has described the effect of Lincoln's eyes by 
saying that they appeared to look directly 
through whatever he concentrated his gaze 
upon, and it is well known that during his 
frequent fits of abstraction he became abso- 
lutely oblivious to the bustle and confusion 
of the court-room and saw nothing of the 
scene before him." 

Lincoln the Lawyer^ pp. 22C-228, The 
Century Company. 



Lincoln's wit in general took a kindly 



XLvibntce to Xincoln 39 

turn, but it was on occasions sharp and biting, 
witness the anecdotes that follow: 

MORDANT WIT IN COURT 

"But the best possible proof that Mr. Lin- 
coln was an unusually fair practitioner and 
generous opponent is the fact that he made 
no enemies in the ranks of his profession dur- 
ing all his active and varied career. 

" Forbearance is often mistaken for timidity, 
and tact for weakness, and it not infrequently 
happened that Lincoln's professional oppo- 
nents misinterpreted his attitude toward them; 
but they were always speedily disillusioned. 
Mr. Swett remarked that ' any one who took 
Lincoln for a simple-minded man [in the court- 
room] would very soon wake up on his back 
in a ditch'; and although he seldom resorted 
to tongue-lashing, and rarely displayed anger, 
there is abundant evidence that no one ever 
attacked him with impunity. 

"Judge Weldon told the writer that on 
one occasion an attorney challenged a juror 



40 Zbe Xincoln tribute :©ook 

because of his personal acquaintance with 
Mr. Lincoln, who appeared for the other 
side. 

" Such an objection was regarded as more 
or less a reflection upon the honor of an at- 
torney in those days, and Judge Davis, who 
was presiding at the time, promptly over- 
ruled the challenge; but when Lincoln rose to 
examine the jury he gravely followed his ad- 
versary's lead and began to ask the talesmen 
whether they were acquainted with his op- 
ponent. 

"After two or three had answered in the 
affirmative, however, his Honor interfered. 

"'Now, Mr. Lincoln,' he observed severely, 
'you are wasting time. The mere fact that 
a juror knows your opponent does not dis- 
qualify him.' 

"'No, your Honor,' responded Lincoln, 
dryly. 'But I am afraid some of the gentle- 
men may not know him, which would place 
me at a disadvantage.' " 

Lincoln the Lawyer, by Frederick Trevor Hill, 
pp. 212, 215. 



tributes to ^Lincoln 41 

The firm of Lincoln and Herndon must 
have been a remarkable one, although the 
jimior partner was undoubtedly Lincoln's in- 
ferior in every respect save in the matter of 
education. Herndon had, nevertheless, an 
excellent mind, and read with sympathetic 
insight the great man's character. In general 
he knows whereof he writes, but the reader 
may safely, now and then, take him with 
a grain of allowance. In the passage which 
we quote below we are inclined to think he 
does scant justice to Lincoln's acquaintance 
with books. Lincoln was not a bookman 
in the sense that he devoured authors vora- 
ciously or swallowed them' whole. But when 
he did read a book, he read, marked, learned, 
and inwardly digested it, and made it his 
own. It was not his way to wear his accom- 
plishments on his sleeve, and he may well have 
read more books than he discussed. That his 
book-knowledge, at least in the years of his 
presidency, was more extensive than Herndon 
would have us believe, is the inference that 
must be drawn from L. E. Chittenden's Recol- 



42 (Tbe Utncoln ZtiMtc :©ook 

lections. In that book the author quotes a 
protest of Professor Joseph Henry, an eminent 
savant, and at the time Secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institute, to the effect that the 
current notions about the President's ignor- 
ance were all wrong; that the President had 
read many books; and that he remembered 
them better than he (Professor Henry) him- 
self did. 

LINCOLN AS READER AND THINKER 

"The truth about Mr. Lincoln is that he 
read less and thought more than any man 
in his sphere in America. No man can put 
his finger on any great book written in the 
last or present century that he read thor- 
oughly. When young, he read the Bible, 
and when of age, he read Shakespeare; but, 
though he often quoted from both, he never 
read either one through. 

"He is acknowledged now to have been a 
great man, but the question is. What made 
him great? I repeat, that he read less and 



tributes to Xtncoln 43 

thought more than any man of his standing in 
America, if not in the world. 

" He possessed originality and power of 
thought in an eminent degree. Besides his 
well established reputation for caution, he 
was concentrated in his thoughts and had 
great continuity of reflection. In every- 
thing he was patient and enduring. These 
are some of the grounds of his wonderful 
success." 

Herndon's Lincoln, by William H. Herndon, 
and Jesse Weik, vol. iii., pp. 593-594- Re- 
printed by permission of D. Appleton & 
Company. 

The following quotation from Arnold's biog- 
raphy conveys a very different impression of 
the place books had in the President's life from 
that created by Herndon's words. To say, as 
Herndon says, that he never read either the 
Bible or Shakespeare through is not a damag- 
ing statement, or, if such it be, might it not 
strike many a professional man of letters as 
hard as it did Lincoln? 



44 Zbc Xincoln tribute JSooft 

LINCOLN AND LITERATURE 

" The two books which he read most were 
the Bible and Shakespeare. With these he 
was perfectly familiar. From the Bible, as 
has before been stated, he quoted frequently, 
and he read it daily, while Shakespeare was 
his constant companion. He took a copy of 
him almost always when travelling, and read 
it at leisure moments. He had a great love 
for poetry and eloquence, and his taste and 
judgment were excellent. Next to Shake- 
speare among the poets was Burns. There 
was a lecture of his upon Burns full of favor- 
ite quotations and sound criticism. He 
sympathized thoroughly with the poem, 'A 
Man 's a Man for A' That.' He was very 
fond of simple ballads, of simple, old-fashioned, 
sad, and plaintive music. He loved to hear 
Scotch ballads sung, and negro melodies, and 
camp-meeting hymns. Holmes's poem of 
' The Last Leaf ' was with him a great favor- 
ite. He recited and read works of poetry and 
eloquence with great simplicity but with much 



trributes to ILtncoln 45 

expression and effect. When visiting the 
army, or on a journey on a steamer or by rail, 
as well as when at home, he would take up his 
copy of Shakespeare and would often read 
aloud to his companions. He would remark: 
' What do you say now to a scene from Ham- 
let or Macbeth ? ' and then he would read 
aloud with the greatest pleasure scene after 
scene and favorite passages, never seeming 
to tire of the enjoyment. On the last Sunday 
of his life, as he was on the steamer returning 
from his visit to Richmond and City Point, 
he read aloud many extracts from Shake- 
speare. He read among other passages the 
following from Macbeth: 

'"Duncan is in his grave; 
After hfe's fitful fever he sleeps well; 
Treason has done his worst: nor steel nor 

poison, 
Mahce domestic, foreign levy, nothing, 
Can touch him further.' 

" Senator Sumner said that ' impressed by 
its beauty, or by something else, he read the 
passage a second time.' His tone, manner. 



46 xibc Xincoln tribute JBooft 

and accent were so impressive that, after his 
assassination, his friends recalled the incident, 
and with it a passage from the same play: 

'"This Duncan 
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, 

against 
The deep damnation of his taking-off.' " 

The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Isaac 
N. Arnold, pp. 443-445, A. C. McClurg, 
Chicago, 1906. 

HIS VEIN OF POETRY AND SENSE OF 

FUN 

" He was a poet, but he was a man in such 
straits, in such tremendous earnest, that he 
used every iota of every force and element 
in his own nature and in his knowledge of men, 
in the most effective way he could, to his 
great end. Throughout three years he was 
a man entirely dominated by a purpose — a 
purpose which integrated and perfected his 
character. 



XLvibntce to ^Lincoln 47 

" But it must not be supposed that all this 
was evident to the men with whom he came 
most frequently in contact. He was more than 
ever a riddle to the wisest among them, more 
than ever a kindly simpleton or merry-andrew 
to the less wise and more self-confident. In- 
deed it was only too easy to mistake his real 
quality, and to lay undue emphasis on its 
more superficial aspects. Often it is the 
more trivial incidents in his story which cling 
longest in one's memory, 

" Several of these had already occurred in 
the journey from Springfield, to the confusion 
of multitudes of his severe and serious sup- 
porters, especially in the Eastern States. 
He had joked his admirers on his personal 
appearance. He had begun to cultivate some 
stubbly whiskers on the demand of a little 
girl who had written to suggest that they 
would be an improvement. And when he 
found her awaiting him en route, he had 
kissed her paternally, and exhibited his conces- 
sions to her childish and perhaps impertinent 
interest. 



48 XLbc Xincoln tribute :J6ook 

"But over and beyond all such incidents — 
and they might be multiplied indefinitely — 
the root of his offending lay in his insatiable 
passion for the ridiculous As some one has 
suggested, he would stoop to pick his favorite 
pearl of laughter out of any muck-heap. 

" He needed laughter and gave himself up 
to it. It seemed to bring relief to his whole 
overwrought body and soul. Also, he needed 
tears: and these two needs were almost con- 
stant in the hard years through which we have 
now to follow him. To the minds of some 
at least of his new companions, sharers in 
his great national task, they ill became a 
statesman. But for better or worse, such 
was the man chosen to disentangle the con- 
fused threads of American destiny. " 

Abraham Lincoln, by Henry Bryan Binns, 
pp. 222-223, E. P. Button, New York, 
1907. 

PRACTICAL JOKES IN THE GRAND 
STYLE 

There is, perhaps, no aspect of Lincoln's 



(Tributes to !ILiucoln 49 

many-sided character which appeals more to 
the people than his humor. Much as it an- 
noyed some of his graver associates, who 
could not accustom themselves to having 
important business interrupted by one of his 
anecdotes, or the conduct of a Cabinet meeting 
preluded by a chapter from Artemus Ward, 
it has proved the delight of the many and 
has increased the affection of posterity for 
him. Examples, submitted in evidence of 
Lincoln's humor are the best tribute to 
this faculty, which in him was developed to 
such an extraordinary degree. 

It had a very practical value as well, and 
a double function. In the first place, it was 
relaxation to Lincoln himself from his fearful 
responsibilities; and, in the second, it served 
many a time to carry home his arguments in a 
way which no amount of cold logic could have 
done. 

The practical joke — practical in more 
senses than one — which he played on Horace 
Greeley shows well to what a useful purpose 
he could turn his sense of fun. 
4 



50 Zbc Xincoln tribute JSook 

Greeley, during the Summer of 1864, took 
Lincoln much to task for not bringing the 
war to an end, claiming that this might have 
been done successfully. Lincoln, although 
convinced of the futility of such an endeavor, 
acquiesced in Greeley's suggestion and — as a 
kind of practical joke, possibly — appointed 
him a representative to deal with the South. 
The wind thus taken out of his sails, Greeley, 
to save himself from a ridiculous position, 
was obliged to embark on what proved a 
wild-goose chase. Thus did Lincoln silence 
a harsh critic. 

The trick he played on the dignified Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, re- 
calls the incident of the Greeley appointment. 
Jealous of his associate Seward, who occupied 
the first position in the Cabinet, Chase made 
capital of the popular notion which found 
Seward responsible for what were, in some 
quarters, regarded as the mistakes of the 
administration, and encouraged action on the 
part of some discontented Senators looking 
toward Seward's removal. Accordingly, a 



tributes to Xincoln 51 

committee of the Senate waited upon the 
President with a demand that the Cabinet 
be reconstructed — merely a poHte way of 
asking for the dismissal of Seward. 

The President gave them no satisfaction, but 
invited them to return that evening at a certain 
hour. He then notified his Cabinet, without 
disclosing to them his purpose, to be present at 
the same hour. What was the astonishment 
of the Senators at being confronted by the 
Cabinet of which they demanded a recon- 
struction, and what was Secretary Chase's 
surprise and indignation at being obliged to 
side with his fellow Secretaries against the very 
committee which was carrying out his purpose. 

Though thus often turned to practical 
advantage, Lincoln's fun was never cruel; 
on the contrary it showed in general a sweet 
reasonableness only too rare in strong success- 
ful men. His dealings with the aggressive 
Stanton gave constant proof of this. 

LINCOLN AND STANTON 

"A committee of Western men, we are told, 



52 Cbe Lincoln tribute J3ooft 

headed by Congressman Owen Lovejoy of 
Illinois, called on the President to urge that 
a spirit of national unity might be promoted 
in the army by the mingling of Eastern and 
Western troops. The plan on its apparent 
merits, as well as because it was presented by 
a warm personal and political friend, inter- 
ested Mr. Lincoln, who wrote a note to the 
Secretary of War suggesting a transfer of 
some of the regiments. As the scheme 
seemed impracticable to Mr. Stanton, he 
refused to carry it out. 

" 'But we have the President's order, sir,' 
said Mr. Lovejoy. 

'"Did Lincoln give you an order of that 
kind?' asked the Secretary. 

'" He did, sir.' 

'"Then he is a damned fool!* was the 
response. 

*"Do you mean to say the President is a 
damned fool ? ' asked the Congressman in 
amazement. 

'" Yes, sir, if he gave you such an order as 
that.' 



drtbutcs to ILincoln 53 

"Returning to the executive mansion, Mr. 
Lovejoy reported the result of the conference. 

'"Did Stanton say I was a damned fool?' 
asked Mr. Lincoln at the close of the recital. 

" ' He did, sir, and repeated it.' 

"'If Stanton said I was a damned fool,' 

concluded the President thoughtfully, 'then 

I must be one; for he is nearly always right, 

and generally says what he means.' " 

Lincoln: Master of Men: A Study in Charac- 
ter, by Alonzo Rothschild, pp. 234-235, 
Houghton, Mifflin, Boston and New York, 1908. 

Nor is the spice of humor wanting in the 
following authentic anecdote: 

LINCOLN'S "INFLUENCE WITH THE 
ADMINISTRATION " 

" Those who came with an appeal from Mr. 
Stanton's decision were sometimes received 
as was Judge Baldwin of California. He ap- 
plied for a pass through the lines to visit his 
brother in Virginia. As both of them were 
Union men, there seemed to be no good reason 
why it should not be granted. 



54 ^be Xlncoln tlribute JBooh 

"'Have you applied to General Halleck?' 
inquired the President. 

" ' Yes,' answered the Judge, 'and met with 
a flat refusal.' 

"'Then you must see Stanton,' said Mr. 
Lincoln. 

'"I have, and with the same result,' was 
the reply, 

'"Well then,' rejoined the President, with 

a smile, ' I can do nothing; for you must know 

that I have very little influence with this 

administration.' " 

Lincoln Master of Men, pp. 232-233, Hough- 
ton, Mifflin. 

Emerson says a word of Lincoln's gift for 
the writing of humorous fables and proverbs 
that may well be here set down: 

LINCOLN THE FABULIST 

" It is certain that the good things of Lincoln 
were first so disguised as pleasantries that they 
had no reputation but as jests, and only later, 
by the very acceptance and adoption they 
found in the mouths of the millions, turned 



^Tributes to Xincoln 55 

out to be the wisdom of the hour. I am sure 
if this man had lived in a period of less facility 
of printing, he would have become mythical 
in a very few years, like ^sop or Pilpay, or 
one of the seven wise masters, by his fables 
and his proverbs. " 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, as quoted in The 
Lincoln Centennial Medal, p. 26, New York 
and London, 1908. 

Lincoln was true as steel to his friends, and 
knew how to value them. A tribute to Stan- 
ton like that which follows honors both him 
who paid it and him who received it: 

GENEROUS PRAISE 

"'Gentlemen,' he said, 'it is my duty to 
submit. I cannot add to Mr. Stanton's 
troubles. His position is one of the most 
difficult in the world. Thousands in the 
army blame him because they are not pro- 
moted, and other thousands out of the army 
blame him because they are not appointed. 
The pressure upon him is immeasurable and 
unending. He is the rock on the beach of 



56 ^be ILlncoln tribute :fiSoof; 

our national ocean against which the breakers 
dash and roar, dash and roar without ceasing. 
He fights back the angry waters and prevents 
them from undermining and overwhelming 
the land. Gentlemen, I do not see how he 
survives, — why he is not crushed and torn 
to pieces. Without him I should be de- 
stroyed. He performs his task superhu- 
manly. Now do not mind this matter for 
Mr. Stanton is right and I cannot wrongly 
interfere with him.' " 

Lincoln, Master of Men, Alonzo Roths- 
child, p. 236, Houghton, Mifflin & Company. 

If a man who can by his words sway great 
masses of men to his will, and rouse their 
deepest feelings to the support of his views 
be a great orator, then Lincoln was such. 
The effect of his spoken words — witness his 
triumph at Cooper Institute in New York, 
on February 27, i860 — upon public opinion 
at a critical moment in American history can 
hardly be overestimated. His oratory was of 
a kind that disdained all flowers of speech and 



tributes to Lincoln 57 

all rhetorical tricks; but it touched the heart, 
and carried conviction with it. Of Lincoln 
as an orator Mr. Horace White says: 

AS AN ORATOR 

" Sometimes his manner was very impas- 
sioned, and he seemed transfigured with his 
subject. . . Then the inspiration that pos- 
sessed him took possession of his hearers also. 
His speaking went to the heart because it 
came from the heart. I have heard cele- 
brated orators who could start thunders of 
applause without changing any man's opin- 
ion. Mr. Lincoln's eloquence was of the 
higher type, which produced conviction in 
others because of the conviction of the speaker 
himself. His listeners felt that he believed 
every word he said, and that, like Martin 
Luther, he would go to the stake rather than 
abate one jot or tittle of it. . 

"That there were, now and then, electrical 
discharges of high tension in Lincoln's elo- 
quence is a fact little remembered, so few 
persons remain who ever came within its 



58 Ebe Xincoln Ilrtbute :©ool; 

range. The most remarkable outburst took 
place at the Bloomington Convention of May 
29, 1856, at which the anti-Nebraska forces 
of Illinois were first collected and welded 
together as one party. Mr. John L. Scripps, 
editor of the Chicago Democratic Press, who 
was present — a man of gravity little likely to 
be carried off his feet by spoken words — said: 

" ' Never was an audience more completely 
electrified by human eloquence. Again and 
again during its delivery they sprang to their 
feet and upon the benches and testified by 
long-continued shouts and the waving of hats 
how deeply the speaker had wrought upon 
their minds and hearts. It fused the mass of 
hitherto incongruous elements into perfect 
homogeneity ; and from that day to the present 
they have worked together in harmonious and 
fraternal union.' " 

Abraham Lincoln, by Horace White, in 
Putnam's and The Reader, February, 1909. 

We spoke above of the Cooper Institute 
speech, and below we quote from Mr. Choate, 
who heard that speech, a description which 



tributes to Xincoln 59 

leaves the reader with a lively sense of the 
profound impression Lincoln produced on 
that momentous occasion: 

A GREAT TRIUMPH 

"It is now forty years since I first saw and 
heard Abraham Lincoln but the impression 
which he left on my mind is ineffaceable. 
After his great successes in the West he came 
to New York to make a political address. 
He appeared in every sense of the word like 
one of the plain people among whom he loved 
to be counted. At first sight there was noth- 
ing impressive or imposing about him — except 
that his great stature singled him out from 
the crowd: his clothes hung awkwardly on his 
giant frame; his face was of a dark pallor, 
without the slightest tinge of color; his 
seamed and rugged features bore the furrows 
of hardship and struggle; his deep-set eyes 
looked sad and anxious; his countenance in 
repose gave little evidence of that brain 
power which had raised him from the lowest 



6o ^be ^Lincoln tribute JSooh 

to the highest station among his countrymen; 
as he talked to me before the meeting, he 
seemed ill at ease, with that sort of appre- 
hension which a young man might feel before 
presenting himself to a new and strange 
audience, whose critical disposition he 
dreaded. It was a great audience, including 
all the noted men — all the learned and cul- 
tured — of his party in New York: editors, 
clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, merchants, 
critics. They were all very curious to hear 
him. His fame as a powerful speaker had 
preceded him, and exaggerated rumor of his 
wit — the worst forerunner of an orator — had 
reached the East. When Mr. Bryant pre- 
sented him, on the high platform of the 
Cooper Institute, a vast sea of eager upturned 
faces greeted him, full of intense curiosity to 
see what this rude child of the people was 
like. He was equal to the occasion. When 
he spoke he was transformed; his eye kindled, 
his voice rang, his face shone and seemed to 
light up the whole assembly. For an hour 
and a half he held his audience in the hollow 



tributes to Xincoln 6i 

of his hand. His style of speech and manner 
of dehvery were severely simple. What 
Lowell called "the grand simplicities of the 
Bible," with which he was so familiar, were 
reflected in his discourse. With no attempt 
at ornament or rhetoric, without parade or 
pretence, he spoke straight to the point. If 
any came expecting the turgid eloquence or 
the ribaldry of the frontier, they must have 
been startled at the earnest and sincere purity 
of his utterances. It was marvellous to see 
how this untutored man, by mere self -disci- 
pline and the chastening of his own spirit, had 
outgrown all meretricious arts, and found his 
own way to the grandeur and strength of 
absolute simplicity. 

" He spoke upon the theme which he had 
mastered so thoroughly. He demonstrated 
by copious historical proofs and masterly logic 
that the fathers who created the Constitution 
in order to form a more perfect union, to 
establish justice, and to secure the blessings 
of liberty to themselves and their posterity, 
intended to empower the Federal Government 



62 ^be Xtncoln tribute JSook 

to exclude slavery from the Territories. In 
the kindliest spirit he protested against the 
avowed threat of the Southern States to de- 
stroy the Union if, in order to secure freedom 
in those vast regions out of which future 
States were to be carved, a Republican Presi- 
dent were elected. He closed with an appeal 
to his audience, spoken with all the fire of his 
aroused and kindling conscience, with a full 
outpouring of his love of justice and liberty, 
to maintain their political purpose on that 
lofty and unassailable issue of right and wrong 
which alone could justify it, and not to be in- 
timidated from their high resolve and sacred 
duty by any threats of destruction to the 
government or of ruin to themselves. He 
concluded with this telling sentence, which 
drove the whole argument home to all our 
hearts: 'Let us have faith that right makes 
might, and in that faith let us to the end 
dare to do our duty as we understand it.' 
That night the great hall, and the next day 
the whole city, rang with delighted applause 
and congratulations, and he who had come 



tributes to Xtncoln 63 

as a stranger departed with the laurels of 

great triumph. " 

Joseph H. Choate, in The Writings of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, vol. i., pp. 99-101. 

Here the reader may be glad to have before 
him the brief description of Lincoln's outer 
man, and the careful sketch of Lincoln's 
character, both of which come from the pen 
of John G. Nicolay: 

PERSONAL DESCRIPTION AND A 
CHARACTER SKETCH 

" Lincoln was of unusual stature, six feet 
four inches, and of spare but muscular build; 
he had been in youth remarkably strong and 
skilful in the athletic games of the frontier, 
where, however, his popularity and recog- 
nized impartiality oftener made him an um- 
pire than a champion. He had regular and 
prepossessing features, dark complexion, 
broad, high forehead, prominent cheek-bones, 
gray deep-set eyes, and bushy black hair, 
turning to gray at the time of his death. 
Abstemious in his habits, he possessed great 



64 ^be Xlncoln tribute JBooh 

physical endurance. He was almost as 
tender-hearted as a woman. ' I have not 
willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom,' 
he was able to say. His^ patience was in- 
exhaustible. He had naturally a cheerful 
and sunny temper, was highly social and sym- 
pathetic, loved pleasant conversation, wit, 
anecdote, and laughter. Beneath this, how- 
ever, ran an undercurrent of sadness; he was 
occasionally subject to hours of deep silence 
and introspection that approached a condi- 
tion of trance. In manner, he was simple, 
direct, void of the least affectation, and en- 
tirely free from awkwardness, oddity, or 
eccentricity. His mental qualities were — a 
quick analytic perception, strong logical 
powers, a tenacious memory, a liberal esti- 
mate and tolerance of the opinions of others, 
ready intuition of human nature; and perhaps 
his most valuable faculty was rare ability to 
divest himself of all feeling or passion in 
weighing motives of person or problems of 
state. His speech and diction were plain, 
terse, forcible. Relating anecdotes with ap- 



,this pen-portral 

iphic representation' 

t)ln, and as a reading 

tten upon his counte 

his manner and hei 



^H PEN-PO] 



idercurrent ofv 

'subject to hours o\ 

Section that approac" 

ice. In manner, he 

of the least affecta:* 

[om awkwardn^i^- 

inenti 



tributes to Xincoln 65 

preciative humor and fascinating dramatic 
skill, he used them freely and effectively in 
conversation and argument. He loved man- 
liness, truth, and justice. He despised all 
trickery and selfish greed. " 

EncyclopcBdia Britannica (article by John 
G. Nicolay), vol. xiv., p. 662, New York, 1882. 

From an English biographer of the Presi- 
dent we take this pen-portrait, remarkable 
alike as a graphic representation of the outer 
man of Lincoln, and as a reading of the moral 
meaning written upon his countenance, and 
conveyed by his manner and bearing: 

AN ENGLISH PEN-PORTRAIT OF 
LINCOLN 

"English journalists, coming to Washington, 
found Lincoln not so much homely in ap- 
pearance, as positively grotesque and un- 
gainly. He seemed to them the actual model 
from which the national stock caricatures of 
Brother Jonathan had been drawn. This note 
of awkwardness was emphasized by the official 
conditions under which they saw him at some 
5 



66 Zbc Xincoln tribute :fl3ook 

public audience, when he was painfully con- 
scious of his own peculiarities. No one knows 
how much Lincoln suffered both from his 
clothes and from critical public inspection 
on these occasions. He knew that to his 
visitors he was a ridiculous-looking President, 
with abnormally big hands swinging at the 
end of arms, long out of proportion, and feet 
which were correspondingly uncompromising. 

'• The apparent size of his extremities was 
further increased by his boots and gloves 
which were always too large. At first sight 
he seemed to be all arms and legs. His thin 
stooping body was covered by a very uncom- 
fortable, creased, and conscious suit of black, 
which could never really adjust itself to the 
corners of his bony frame; while out-of-doors, 
his great height was augmented by the in- 
evitable top-hat. He wore an old one cov- 
ered with crape. 

" But it was the head and face which most 
astonished his visitors. It seemed to them, 
perched upon the summit of that extra- 
ordinarily powerful frame, and surrounded by 



^Tributes to Xtncoln 67 

dark bristling hair, like an egg in a magpie's 
nest. Yet small though it seemed, all its 
ill-assorted individual features were large, 
from the ears that pushed out from their dark 
Republican thatch, to the nose which pro- 
jected so prominently, with a remarkable air 
of alertness, originality, force, and inde- 
pendence, from his face. Largest of all, the 
'straggling' mouth, mobile and powerful, 
alike for laughter and command, and for 
whatever the strange spirit of the man might 
choose to utter. But it was the eyes, deep 
set under jutting brows, that gave his face 
that unforgettable expression so difficult to 
analyze, which belonged to his very soul. 
They were the eyes of a seer, of a man who 
was not to be deceived by the passing show, 
because he beheld the powers and principles 
that move behind it, and they were the eyes 
of a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 
For the rest, his jaw was long and square, 
and his chin very firm, his forehead ran back 
and was somewhat narrow but high, his 
cheeks were thin and creased over their 



68 XLbc ^Lincoln Ztibntc JSooft 

prominent cheek-bones, with a noticeable 
mole above the right-hand corner of the 
mouth near the base of one of the strongly 
marked furrows, and the whole face was 
bronzed and its surface scarred in all directions 
as though eaten 'by vitriol.' 

"The upper lip was always clean shaven. 
The beard and whiskers being newly grown 
were at this time very patchy and irregular; 
while he had many a joke against his un- 
governable head of hair. 'It had a way of 
getting up as far as possible in the world,' 
he said; and he used to tell with relish how, 
after his nomination, he heard a boy shout- 
ing his portrait through the streets, adding, 
'will look better when he has had his hair 
combed,' 

" Yet even on such public occasions, when 
Lincoln was least at home with himself, the 
visitor could not be blind to the moral 
strength, an inherent spiritual dignity, of the 
man who presented so awkward a figure. 
When he smiled, his whole face became 
suffused with the attractive beauty of his 



tributes to Xincoln 69 

inner nature; in many little ways he revealed 
even to strangers that sympathetic kindness 
of heart which is the true good-breeding; and 
when he told a story there came a gleam and 
sparkle of humor into his eyes, as he rubbed 
his hand down his long thigh, and chuckled 
over his fun. 

"When he was engrossed in serious conver- 
sation, he forgot all that nervous ungainliness 
of which we have heard so much. His atti- 
tude became, instead, one of unstudied dignity 
without any trace of self-consciousness. The 
same loss of awkwardness was noticeable 
after the first few sentences of his public 
utterances. In the act of expressing his 
convictions he sloughed off everything in his 
appearance which detracted from his man- 
hood and mastery, and revealed himself as 
worthy of the truths he uttered and the great 
office entrusted to him." 

Abraham Lincoln, by Henry Bryan Binns, 
pp. 223-226. 

No one who is studying the pen-portraits 



70 ILbc Xincoln tribute :Booft 

of Lincoln will willingly pass by that by 
Herndon: 

HERNDON'S PORTRAIT 

" He was not a pretty man by any means, 
nor was he an ugly one; he was a homely man. 
careless of his looks, plain-looking and plain- 
acting. He had no pomp, display, or dignity, 
so-called. He appeared simple in his carriage 
and bearing. He was a sad-looking man; 
his melancholy dripped from him as he 
walked. His apparent gloom impressed his 
friends, and created sympathy for him — one 
means of his great success. He was gloomy, 
abstracted, and joyous — rather humorous — 
by turns; but I do not think that he knew 
what real joy was for many years. . . . 

"Thus, I repeat, stood and walked and talked 
this singular man. He was odd, but when 
that gray eye and that face and those features 
were lit up by the inward soul in fires of 
emotion, then it was that all of those ap- 
parently ugly features sprang into the organs 
of beauty or disappeared in the sea of inspira- 



tributes to Xincoln 71 

tion that often flooded his face. Sometimes 

it appeared as if Lincoln's soul was fresh from 

its Creator. " 

Herndon's Lincoln, by William H. Herndon 
and Jesse W. Weik, vol. ii., pp. 297, 299. 
Reprinted by permission of D. Appleton & 
Company. 

It was Lincoln's boast that he wished to 
place no thorn in any man's bosom — and that 
such was his earnest desire his whole career 
bears witness. But many a thorn was thrust 
into his own bosom. Not his least pain was 
caused by the office-seekers. 

THE BURDEN OF GREATNESS 

"It is difficult for anybody, at this distance 
of time, and when all things are at peace 
throughout the republic, to realize how great 
was the burden placed upon Lincoln by his 
election to the presidency. There were two 
great troubles — the office-seekers and the 
impending war. The first of these, of course, 
was the smaller, but it was none the less a 
grievous trial. For, in addition to the strain 



72 ^be Xlncoln tribute :©ooft 

that it brought upon his patience, it inter- 
fered very seriously with his attempt to think 
over the greater and far more trying ques- 
tions that must soon be settled. Lincoln was 
good-natured, patient, kind, desirous of 
doing whatever was asked of him, in reason. 
It was always irksome for him to refuse a 
favor, even when the petitioner was not 
altogether reasonable or deserving. He dis- 
liked to refer applicants to others, his sub- 
ordinates. He never turned a deaf ear to 
any petitioner, however humble, however 
importunate. It was truly said of him that 
his patience was almost infinite. It is easy 
to see, therefore, how difficult it was for his 
immediate friends to protect him from the 
incursions of curiosity-seeking and office- 
seeking visitors, then and afterwards." 

Abraham Lincoln and the Downfall of 
American Slavery, by Noah Brooks, pp. 204- 
205, New York, 1908. 



Upon Lincoln were heaped blame and praise 
unmeasured : 



tributes to Xtncoln 73 

DETRACTION AND EULOGY 

" During his brief term of power he was 
probably the object of more abuse, viHfication, 
and ridicule than any other man in the world ; 
but when he fell by the hand of an assassin, 
at the very moment of his stupendous victory, 
all the nations of the earth vied with one 
another in paying homage to his character, 
and the thirty-five years that have since 
elapsed have established his place in history 
as one of the great benefactors not of his own 
country alone, but of the human race. . , . 

" Fiction can furnish no match for the ro- 
mance of his life, and biography will be 
searched in vain for such startling vicissi- 
tudes of fortune, so great power and glory 
won out of such humble beginnings and ad- 
verse circumstances. . . . 

"In the zenith of his fame he was the wise, 
patient, courageous, successful ruler of men; 
exercising more power than any monarch of 
his time, not for himself, but for the good 
of the people who had placed it in his hands; 



74 '^^c ^Lincoln tribute :fiSook 

commander-in-chief of a vast military power, 
which waged with ultimate success the great- 
est war of the century; the triumphant cham- 
pion of popular government, the deliverer 
of four millions of his fellow-men from bond- 
age; honored by mankind as Statesman, 
President, and Liberator." 

Reprinted, with the permission of the 
author and T. Y. Crowell & Company, from 
Joseph H. Choate's Abraham Lincoln in The 
Writings of Abraham Lincoln, vol. i., pp. 81-82. 

For all Lincoln's frank dealing with the 
world in general, there was about him, in the 
depths of his nature, an impenetrable reserve. 
No man easily plucked out the heart of his 
mystery. Seemingly incompatible qualities, 
that were none the less blended harmoniously, 
baffled the analyst, 

THE HEART OF THIS MYSTERY 

"I referred at the beginning of this volume 
to the fascination of Lincoln's personality. 
That fascination arises, as I think, from a sort 
of contradiction or paradox of which one is 



tributes to Xincoln 75 

always sensible whenever one touches it. It 
often reminds one of Dickens, in whom, to 
quote his latest biographer, uncommon sensi- 
bility was mixed with common sense. But 
Lincoln's is not only one of those tragi-comic 
characters which are in themselves so rich in 
human suggestion; it is, besides, that of a 
logician who was never able to divorce his 
reasoning faculty from his humanity. In a 
word, he was a man in whom the contradictions 
of lesser types were reconciled but not wholly 
obliterated. And it is the men who have, as 
it were, stretched our human nature to in- 
clude in their one personality elements we 
have by common consent regarded hitherto 
as incompatible, that attract and hold our 
attention. It is not merely that Lincoln, born 
in a log cabin, became the autocrat of the 
White House; such a story was not unpre- 
cedented in America; it is a recurring ro- 
mance all through history; it is not even that 
the uncrowned ruler of a continent, whose eyes 
beheld as in a mystical vision the Union of its 
States, should finish a conversation sitting 



76 XLbc Xlncoln tribute JSooft 

nonchalantly on some door-step in his capital, 
or should turn immediately from the crackling 
pages of a second-rate humorist to that 
which he regarded as the most sacred and 
solemn act of his life. It is not these striking 
but superficial anomalies which hold us as we 
consider the man, but something always more 
subtle, essential, and inexplicable. He had 
imbibed the spirit of action, he had lived in 
its atmosphere all his days, and yet stood 
always as it were a step or two aloof from it. 
He always loafed a little, even in the press of 
affairs, not only that he might reason with 
himself about causes and results, but often 
that he might recall a story illustrating some 
aspect of events, which seemed to others 
trivial or irrelevant. Almost diffuse in his 
emotionality, he was perhaps the most cau- 
tious man of his time. Nearly always pleasant 
and ready to converse, without the appear- 
ance of secretiveness, and often saying ' help- 
lessly natural and naive things,' as astute 
critics observed; there was yet none of his 
critics, not even of his intimates, who fathomed 



^Tributes to Xincoln 77 

the President's reserve, which was deeper than 

a well." 

Abraham Lincoln, by Henry Bryan Binns, 
PP- 356-357, E. P. Button & Company. 

Lincoln's obliging readiness in yielding to 
the wishes of others in matters unimportant 
or unessential created the impression in some 
quarters that the President was not the master 
in his own official household, though that 
household itself was not long in doubt upon 
the question. 

LINCOLN AND SEWARD— LINCOLN'S 
MASTERY 

' ' Upon this testimony and more like it, 
throughout Mr. Welles's monograph, we infer 
that the Secretary of State — appearances to 
the contrary notwithstanding — must have 
stepped back to the place so firmly yet 
courteously pointed out by the President, in 
the little private interlude which closed their 
first four weeks of office. From that time 
to the end, Seward knew Lincoln to be his 



78 XLbc Xlncoln Crtbutc JBooft 

master. With a grace peculiarly his own, the 
Secretary adapted himself to this unexpected 
development. His every action seemed to 
say, as did the fair penitent of the house of 
Capulet : 

'Pardon, I beseech you! 
Henceforward I am ever ruled by you.' 

" When his inclinations or purposes con- 
flicted with those of his chief, he gave way — • 
nay, more, he put forth all his powers to 
carry out Mr. Lincoln's wishes. 'There is 
but one vote in the Cabinet,' the minister once 
declared, 'and that is cast by the President.' " 

Lincoln, Master of Men, by Alonzo Roths- 
child, pp. 150-15 1, Houghton, Mifflin, & 
Company, Boston and New York, 1908. 

The least obstinate or self-opinionated of 
men, Lincoln knew, as we have said before, 
the art of bending where no principle called 
for inflexibility. But he was also a man of 
iron, a commander whose orders were obeyed 
— " the most perfect ruler of men," Stanton 



^Tributes to Xtncoln 79 

would have it, "the world has ever seen." 
General Ulysses S. Grant said of Lincoln as a 
leader: 

GRANT'S SPLENDID TRIBUTE 

" ' He might appear to go Seward's way one 
day,' Grant said in reviewing Lincoln's 
leadership, 'and Stanton's another; but all 
the time he was going his own course and they 
with him.' 

" ' He was incontestably the greatest man I 

ever knew,' is Grant's estimate of him, while 

Sherman said : ' Of all the men I ever met he 

seemed to possess more of the elements of 

greatness combined with goodness than any 

other.' " 

Abraham Lincoln — the Boy and the Man, 
by James Morgan, pp. 332, 333, and 354, The 
Macmillan Co., New York, 1908. 

No man's words and bearing and coun- 
tenance, it would seem, have ever carried 
with them a clearer assurance of honesty than 



8o Zbc Ulncoln tribute JSooft 

Abraham Lincoln's — "honest old Abe" as he 
was nicknamed. Even the casual observer 
never failed to note it. Herndon was, of 
course, not one of these, but he voices the 
impression of all. 

THE HONESTY OF LINCOLN 

"His pursuit of truth, as before mentioned, 
was indefatigable. He reasoned from well- 
chosen principles with such clearness, force, 
and directness that the tallest intellects in 
the land bowed to him. He was the strongest 
man I ever saw, looking at him from the 
elevated standpoint of reason and logic. He 
came down from that height with irresistible 
and crashing force. His Cooper Institute 
and other printed speeches will prove this; 
but his speeches before the courts — especially 
the Supreme Court of Illinois — if they had 
been preserved, would demonstrate it still 
more plainly. Here he demanded time to 
think and prepare. The office of reason is 
to determine the truth. Truth is the power 



tributes to Eincoln 8i 

of reason, and Lincoln loved truth for its own 
sake. It was to him reason's food. 

" Conscience, the second great quality of 
Mr. Lincoln's character, is that faculty which 
induces in us love of the just. Its real office 
is justice; right and equity are its correla- 
tives. As a court, it is in session continuously ; 
it decides all acts at all times. Mr. Lincoln 
had a deep, broad, living conscience. His 
reason, however, was the real judge; it told 
him what was true or false, and therefore 
good or bad, right or wrong, just or unjust, 
and his conscience echoed back the decision. 
His conscience ruled his heart; he was always 
just before he was generous. It cannot be 
said of any mortal that he was always abso- 
lutely just. Neither was Lincoln always just; 
but his general life was. It follows that if Mr. 
Lincoln had great reason and great con- 
science he must have been an honest man; 
and so he was. He was rightfully entitled to 
the appellation 'Honest Abe.' Honesty was 
his polar star," 

Reprinted from Herndon's Lincoln, vol. ii., 
6 



82 ^be Xincoln tribute :©ooF^ 

pp. 307-308, by permission of D. Appleton 
& Company, New York, 1908. 

Among the qualities that made Lincoln a 
master of men, tact was conspicuous; and 
it accomplished marvels. Horace Greeley 
had it in mind when he said that, if he went 
again to Washington, he would not cross the 
threshold of the White House, because "the 
President wound him round his finger." 
This quality made Lincoln many friends. 
]\Ir. Frederick Trevor Hill refers to it in the 
following description of Lincoln's relation to 
his colleagues of the Illinois Bar: 

LINCOLN'S TACT 

"The sharp, personal collisions inevitable 
in litigation bruise and jar the contestants, 
no matter how hardened they may be, and the 
man who emerges from the fray with no preju- 
dice against his opponent and without having 
given the least offence possesses a remarkable 
temperament — and such a man was Abraham 
Lincoln. He knew how to try a case without 
making it a personal issue between counsel. 



(Wbutee to Xtncoln 83 

He could utter effective replies without in- 
sulting his opponent, and during all his prac- 
tice he never made an enemy in the ranks of 
his profession. No one but a lawyer can 
appreciate what this means; but it requires 
generosity, patience, tact, courtesy, firmness, 
courage, self-control, and a big-mindedness 
which few men possess. Yet, day after day, 
and year after year, Lincoln met all sorts 
and conditions of lawyers at a time when they 
were all young, ambitious, and keen to suc- 
ceed, without embittering any one or for- 
feiting his self-respect. Not many members 
of his profession can show an equal record; 
certainly none of the Springfield Bar has left 
a similar reputation." 

Lincoln the Lawyer, by Frederick Trevor Hill, 
p. 109, The Century Co., New York, 1906. 

Lincoln subscribed to no creed, but by his 
serious and reverent attitude toward life, 
and by his trust in a righteous overruling 
Providence, he was essentially and profoundly 
religious. John G. Nicolay, whose privilege 



84 Ebe Lincoln tribute :fi3ook 

it was to know the President long and inti- 
mately, says: 

A PROFOUNDLY RELIGIOUS SPIRIT 

" Benevolence and forgiveness were the very 
basis of his character; his world-wide human- 
ity is aptly embodied in a phrase of his second 
inaugural: 'With malice toward none, with 
charity for all.' His nature was deeply re- 
ligious but he belonged to no denomination; 
he had faith in the eternal justice and bound- 
less mercy of Providence, and made the golden 
rule of Christ his practical creed." 

Encyclopcsdia Britannica, vol. xii., p. 662. 

President Roosevelt has said many things 
in Lincoln's honor, and from them we take, 
first, a passage in which he singles out for 
admiration his devotion to an ideal and his 
readiness to take half a loaf of good bread 
rather than none: 

A PRACTICAL IDEALIST 

PRESIDENT Roosevelt's tribute 

"Throughout his entire life, and especially 



tributes to Xfncoln 85 

after he rose to leadership in his party, Lincoln 
was stirred to his depths by the sense of fealty 
to a lofty ideal; but throughout his entire life 
he also accepted human nature as it is, and 
worked with keen, practical good sense to 
achieve results with the instruments at hand. 
It is impossible to conceive of a man farther 
removed from baseness, farther removed from 
corruption, from mere self-seeking; but it is 
also impossible to conceive of a man of more 
sane and healthy mind — a man less under the 
influence of that fantastic and diseased 
morality (so fantastic and diseased as to be in 
reality profoundly immoral) which makes a 
man in this work-a-day world refuse to do 
what is possible because he cannot accom- 
plish the impossible." 

Theodore Roosevelt in The Writings of 
Abraham Lincoln, pp. v.-vi., New York, 
1905. 

Herndon is, perhaps, a trifle prone to split 
hairs when he discusses Lincoln's humanity: 
his questions in regard to what is meant by 
humanity are somewhat beside the point. 



86 XLbe Xincoln tribute JBooU 

No one supposes, as he seems to suggest, that 
humanity involves sacrificing truth or right 
for the love of a friend. Men may, indeed, 
regard others as inhumane who have refused 
to sacrifice truth or right for love of them, 
but in the abstract and as a general proposi- 
tion they know that such sacrifice is not 
humanity but partiality, that love of truth 
and right is in reality nothing more than the 
expression of a broad humanity. 

However this may be, he has paid a splendid 
tribute to his great chief in the following 
passage : 

THE QUESTION OF HUMANITY 

'"But was not Mr. Lincoln a man of great 
humanity?' asks a friend at my elbow; to 
which I reply, ' Has not that question been 
answered already?' Let us suppose it has 
not. We must understand each other. 
What is meant by humanity? Is it meant 
that he had much of human nature in him? 
If so, I grant that he was a man of humanity. 
If, in the event of the above definition being 



^Tributes to Xincoln 87 

unsatisfactory or untrue, it is meant that he 
was tender and kind, then I again agree. 
But if the inference is that he would sacrifice 
truth or right in the slightest degree for the 
love of a friend, then he was neither tender 
nor kind; nor did he have any humanity. 
The law of human nature is such that it 
cannot be all head, all conscience, and all 
heart in one person at the same time. Our 
Maker so constituted things that, where God 
through reason blazed the way, we might 
boldly walk therein. The glory of Mr. Lin- 
coln's power lay in the just and magnificent 
equipoise of head, conscience, and heart; and 
here his fame must rest or not at all. 

•' Not only were Mr. Lincoln's perceptions 
good; not only was nature suggestive to him; 
not only was he original and strong; not 
only had he great reason, good understanding; 
not only did he love the true and the good— 
the eternal right; not only was he tender, 
sympathetic, and kind; — but, in due propor- 
tion and in legitimate subordination, he had 
a glorious combination of them all. 



88 Zbc Xincoln ^Tribute 3Booh 

" Through his perceptions — the suggestive- 
ness of nature, his originality and strength; 
through his magnificent reason, his under- 
standing, his conscience, his tenderness, quick 
sympathy, his heart; he approximated, as 
nearly as human nature and the imperfec- 
tions of man would permit, to an embodi- 
ment of the great moral principle, ' Do unto 
others as ye would they should do unto you.' " 

Reprinted from Herndon's Lincoln, vol. ii., 
pp. 3 1 1-3 12, by permission of D. Appleton & 
Company. 

Lincoln's crowning and unique virtue, the 
master-trait of his character, that by which 
he is the equal, if not the superior, of any 
man in history, is magnanimity. This virtue 
prompted him to banish from his nature 
malice and envy, and all the shabby company 
that follows in their train. It took form in 
many a shining act, and is well exemplified 
in this incident: 

LINCOLN'S MAGNANIMITY 

"Upon the second day of the decisive bat- 



tlrlbutcs to Lincoln 89 

tie of Gettysburg, President Lincoln wrote an 
official order as Commander-in-Chief to Gen- 
eral Meade, the Union commander, directing 
him to intercept Lee's retreat and give him 
another battle. The general had been in 
command of the army but five or six days, 
and as his predecessors had been much criti- 
cised for failures, the President knew he would 
be cautious about risking a battle after having 
gained one. He sent the order by a special 
messenger, with a private note saying that 
this seemed to him to be the thing to do, but 
that he would leave it to the ultimate decision 
of the military commander on the ground. 
The official order was not a matter of record, 
and, he said, need not be. If Meade would 
undertake the movement, and it was success- 
ful, he need say nothing about it. If it 
failed, he could publish the order immedi- 
ately. In other words: 'Go ahead. Make 
an heroic attempt to annihilate that army 
in its disheartened state and before it 
can recross the river. If the attempt suc- 
ceeds, you take the glory of it; and if 



go Zbe Xlncoln tribute JBooh 

it fails I will take the responsibility of 
it.'" 

Lincoln Centenary, p. 27, Albany, 1909. 

Through the fiery ordeal of the War it was 
the sense of the sure support of the plain 
people that, more than aught else perhaps, 
sustained and comforted Lincoln's spirit. 
Of his belief in the plain people, and of their 
steadfast faith in him, Mr. Choate says: 

LINCOLN AND THE PLAIN PEOPLE 

"In all the grandeur of the vast power that 

he wielded, he never ceased to be one of the 

plain people, as he always called them, never 

lost or impaired his perfect sympathy with 

them, was always in perfect touch with them 

and open to their appeals; and here lay the 

very secret of his personality and of his power, 

for the people in turn gave him their absolute 

confidence. His courage, his fortitude, his 

patience, his hopefulness, were sorely tried 

but never exhausted." 

Joseph H. Choate in The Writings of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, vol. i,, p. 104. Reprinted with 



tributes to Lincoln 91 

the permission of the author and T. Y. 
Crowell & Company. 

And of the same purport are these words 
of Carl Schurz: 

" They looked to him as one who was with 
them and of them in all their hopes and fears, 
their joys and sorrows —who laughed with 
them and wept with them; and as his heart 
was theirs, so their hearts turned to him. His 
popularity was far different from that of 
Washington, who was revered with awe, or 
that of Jackson, the unconquerable hero, 
for whom party enthusiasm never grew weary 
of shouting. To Abraham Lincoln the 
people became bound by a genuine sentimen- 
tal attachment. It was not a matter of re- 
spect, or confidence, or party pride, for this 
feeHng spread far beyond the boundary lines 
of his party; it was an affair of the heart, 
independent of mere reasoning. When the 
soldiers in the field or their folks at home spoke 
of ' Father Abraham,' there was no cant in it. 
They felt that their President was really caring 



92 Zbc !lLincoln tribute :ffiook 

for them as a father would, and that they 
could go to him, every one of them. as they 
would go to a father, and talk to him of what 
troubled them, sure to find a willing ear and 
tender sympathy. Thus their President, and 
his cause, and his endeavors, and his success 
gradually became to them almost matters 
of family concern. And this popularity car- 
ried him triumphantly through the Presiden- 
tial election of 1864, in spite of an opposition 
within his own party which at first seemed 
very formidable." 

Carl Schurz in The Writings of Abraham 
Lincoln, vol. i., 60-61. Reprinted with the 
permission of Houghton, Mifflin, & Company. 

To William Lloyd Garrison and his band 
of idealists who had long crusaded for the 
abolition of slavery the Emancipation Procla- 
mation was a great triumph. At last the 
idea had come to its own : 

EMANCIPATION 

" Ideas rule the world, and never was there 
a more signal instance of this triumph of an 



^Tributes to Xincoln 93 

idea than here. William Lloyd Garrison, who 
thirty years before had begun his crusade for 
the abolition of slavery, and had Hved to see 
this glorious and unexpected consummation 
of the hopeless cause to which he had devoted 
his life, well described the proclamation as a 
'great historic event, sublime in its magni- 
tude, momentous and beneficent in its far- 
reaching consequences, and eminently just 
and right alike to the oppressor and the 
oppressed.' " 

Joseph H. Choate in The Writings of Abraham 
Lincoln, vol. i., p. 107. R^PF^^^^^^'.^J^i^ 
permission of the author and T. Y. Crowell 

& Company. 

The solution of no problem can be conclu- 
sive into which prejudice has entered, and 
there are few problems into which prejudice 
is more likely to enter than those which arise 
from the intercourse of different races. To us, 
therefore, who have our share of such prob- 
lems, nothing can be more appropriate than 
to recall the attitude of our great President 
whose sympathies were large enough to 



94 ^be Xincoln Q:ril)utc 3Booft 

include all colors and all creeds, Frederick 
Douglass the colored orator says of the 
breadth of Lincoln's sympathies: 

FREDERICK DOUGLASS ON LINCOLN 

" In all my interviews with Mr. Lincoln I 
was impressed with his entire freedom from 
popular prejudice against the colored race. 
He was the first great man that I talked with 
in the United States, who in no single instance 
reminded me of the difference between him- 
self and myself, or the difference of color, 
and I thought that all the more remarkable 
because he came from a State where there 
are black laws. I account partially for his 
kindness to me because of the similarity 
with which I had fought my way up, we both 
starting at the lowest round of the ladder. . . . 

"There was one thing concerning Lincoln 
that I was impressed with, and that was that 
a statement of his was an argument more 
convincing than any amount of logic. He 
had a happy faculty for stating a proposition, 
of stating it so that it needed no argument. 



tiributes to Xincoln 95 

It was a rough kind of reasoning, but it went 
right to the point. Then, too, there was 
another feehng that I had with reference to 
him, and that was that while I felt in his pres- 
ence I was in the presence of a very great 
man, as great as the greatest, I felt as though 
I could go and put my hand on him if I 
wanted to, to put my hand on his shoulder. 
Of course I did not do it, but I felt that I 
could. I felt as though I was in the presence 
of a big brother, and that there was safety in 
his atmosphere." 

Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Dis- 
tinguished Men of His Time, pp. 193-195, 
New York, 1886. 



Out of the South comes this voice in Lin- 
coln's praise. The speaker is a colored 
man of distinction. It will be noted that 
he endows the Emancipator with all the 
virtues of the negro race. Surely there are 
those with a bent for affirmation who will 
answer in the affirmative the rhetorical 
question with which the quotation closes. 



96 ^be Xincoln tribute JBooft 

A HIGHLY COLORED TRIBUTE 

" Mr. Lincoln was, in truth, a great and good 
man; the man not only for his time, but for 
the colored people. It has occurred to a 
distinguished correspondent of mine, Senator 
Hoar, that Mr. Lincoln had many traits for 
which the colored people are noted. Among 
these traits were a sweetness of disposition, 
great patience of the wrong ; he had no memory 
for injustice; was forgiving; was ready to wait 
for the slow processes by which God accom- 
plishes great and permanent blessings for 
mankind. 

*' Like the Negro, Mr. Lincoln was born in a 
hovel. He had to labor incessantly for his 
daily bread. His educational advantages 
were the poorest. He had scarcely a year's 
schooling. He was deprived of books. The 
Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Life of Washing- 
ton, Robinson Crusoe, and Msop's Fables 
were the books to which he owed most. 
His early narrow escapes showed that he 
was a providential man. With all this. 



Ztibntcs to Xfncoln 97 

Mr. Lincoln's religious sense was deep and 
pervading. The very biography of Mr. Lin- 
coln's struggles for bread, for clothes, for 
money, and for 'a little learning' reads so 
much like the story of some Negro battling 
against adversity. Had Mr. Lincoln been a 
member of the Negro race it is doubtful if 
he would have outstripped Frederick Douglass 
in the race of life. May it not be stated that 
the two typical Americans are Abraham 
Lincoln and Frederick Douglass ? " 

R. R. Wright, President of Georgia State 
Industrial College, in Abraham Lincoln: 
Tributes from his Associates, pp. 185-186, 
New York and Boston, 1895. 

In a little book — excellently written and 
full of insight it is — the author, an Alabaman, 
Mr. William Garrott Brown, speaks hand- 
somely of Lincoln in a comparison between 
him and his popularly rhetorical rival, Stephen 
A. Douglas: 

A SOUTHERNER'S PRAISE 

" Slower of growth and devoid altogether of 



98 Zbc ^Lincoln Zvibutc JSook 

many brilliant qualities which his rival pos- 
sessed, Lincoln nevertheless outreached him 
by the measure of the two gifts the other 
lacked: the twin gifts of humor and brooding 
melancholy. Bottomed by the one in home- 
liness, his character was by the other drawn 
upward to the height of human nobility and 
aspiration. His great capacity of pain, 
which but for his buffoonery would no doubt 
have made him mad, was the source of his 
rarest excellences. Familiar with squalor, 
and hospitable to vulgarity, his mind was 
yet tenanted by sorrow, a place of midnight 
wrestlings. In him, as never before in any 
other man, were high and low things mated, 
and awkwardness and ungainliness and un- 
couthness justified in their uses. At once 
coarser than his rival and infinitely more re- 
fined and gentle, he had mastered lessons 
which the other had never found the need of 
learning, or else had learned too readily and 
then dismissed. He had thoroughness, for 
the other's competence; insight into human 
nature, and a vast sympathy, for the other's 



tributes to Xincoln 99 

facile handling of men; a deep devotion to the 
right, for the other's loyalty, to party plat- 
forms. The very core of his nature was truth, 
and he himself is reported to have said of 
Douglas that he cared less for the truth, as 
the truth, than any other man he knew. . . . 

" We cannot turn from him [Douglas] to his 
rival but with changed and softened eyes. 
For Lincoln, indeed, is one of the few men 
eminent in politics whom we admit into the 
hidden places of our thought; and there, 
released from that coarse clay which prisoned 
him, we companion him forever with the 
gentle and heroic of older lands. Douglas 
abides without." 

Stephen Arnold Douglas, William Garrott 
Brown, pp. 114, nS, 141, Houghton, Mifflin, 
& Company, 1902. 

Lincoln's practicality has often been insisted 
upon, but to his contemporaries he did not 
by any means always appear practical. His 
mercy to those condemned to punishment 
seemed to them to be subversive of discipline, 



100 tTbe Uincoln Zvibntc 3BooFi 

a weakness verging on sentimentality, rather 
than a strength. The world, however, has 
judged differently. 

PITY AND TENDERNESS 

" He was tender-hearted to a fault, and never 
could resist the appeals of wives and mothers 
of soldiers who had got into trouble and were 
under sentence of death for their offences. 
His Secretary of War and other officials com- 
plained that they never could get deserters 
shot. As surely as the women of the culprit's 
family could get at him he always gave way. 
Certainly you will all appreciate his exquisite 
sympathy with the suffering relatives of those 
who had fallen in battle. His heart bled with 
theirs. Never was there a more gentle and 
tender utterance than his letter to a mother 
who had given all her sons to her country, 
written at a time when the angel of death had 
visited almost every household in the land, 
and was already hovering over him. 

" * I have been shown,' he says, ' in the files 
of the War Department a statement that you 



Zxibntce to Xincoln loi 

are the mother of five sons who have died 

gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how 

weak and fruitless must be any words of mine 

which should attempt to beguile you from 

your grief for a loss so overwhelming — but I 

cannot refrain from tendering to you the 

consolation which may be found in the thanks 

of the Republic they died to save. I pray 

that our Heavenly Father may assuage the 

anguish of your bereavement and leave you 

only the cherished memory of the loved and 

the lost, and the solemn pride that must be 

yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon 

the altar of freedom.' " 

Joseph H. Choate in The Writings of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, vol. i., pp. 105-106. Reprinted 
by permission of the author and T. Y. Crowell 
& Company. 

It was Lincoln's greatest misfortune that, 
loving his fellowmen as he did, and ever wish- 
ing to foster peace, it fell to his lot to conduct 
so terrible a war. But it was his greatest 
glory that, under circumstances so painful, he 
neither faltered in what seemed to him his 



I02 Ubc Xincoln tribute JBool? 

duty, nor ever ceased to love even his enemies. 
He was the great statesman that he was be- 
cause he rose above questions of policy to 
questions of right. Nowhere is his lofty atti- 
tude better shown than in the second inaugural 
address, of which the following is the estimate 
of Carl Schurz : 

THE SECOND INAUGURAL— "A 
SACRED POEM" 

" The days of the Confederacy were evi- 
dently numbered. Only the last blow re- 
mained to be struck. Then Lincoln's second 
inauguration came, and with it his second in- 
augural address. Lincoln's famous ' Gettys- 
burg speech' has been much and justly 
admired. But far greater, as well as far more 
characteristic, was that inaugural in which he 
poured out the whole devotion and tenderness 
of his great soul. It had all the solemnity of a 
father's last admonition and blessing to his 
children before he lay down to die. These 
were its closing words: 'Fondly do we hope, 
fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge 



tributes to Xtncoln 103 

of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God 
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled 
up by the bondman's two hundred and fifty 
years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and 
until every drop of blood drawn with the 
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the 
sword, as was said three thousand years ago, 
so still it must be said, "The judgments of the 
Lord are true and righteous altogether." 
With malice toward none, with charity for 
all, with firmness in the right as God gives 
us'to see the right, let us strive to finish the 
work we are in; to bind up the nation's 
wounds; to care for him who shall have borne 
the battle, and for his widow and his orphan; 
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just 
and lasting peace among ourselves and with 
all nations.' 

' ' This was like a sacred poem. No American 
President had ever spoken words like these 
to the American people. America never had 
a President who found such words in the 
depth of his heart." 

Carl Schurz in The Writings of Abraham 



I04 XLbc ^Lincoln tribute 3Booft 

Lincoln, vol. i., pp. 67-68. Reprinted by 
permission of the author and Houghton, 
Mifflin, & Company. 

No more impressive tribute to Lincoln can 
be found than was paid by the wave of uni- 
versal grief that swept over this country with 
the news of his assassination. The effect of 
the President's death is brought poignantly 
home by such descriptions as that of Cesar 
Pascal, a French biographer of Lincoln: 

THE NATION'S GRIEF 

" Shall we now attempt to tell of the national 
sadness and gloom? Shall we show this 
great people suddenly precipitated from the 
radiant summits of joy to the very bottom of 
a black abyss of grievous sorrow? Shall we 
describe the stupefaction which the blasting 
news spread when first it was heard; then 
the demonstrations, as deeply felt as they 
were general, of indignation and distress; 
the sombre aspects of the cities; the public 



tributes to Xtncoln 105 

edifices and dwellings draped in black; the 
shops closed for three days ; the people pale 
and with lowered eyes filled with tears; 
popular orators addressing crowds in wild 
incoherent words, their speeches ending in 
the sobs of both the speaker and those who 
listened; the churches filled by crowds of 
the faithful prostrated with grief . . . ? 
Shall we follow the funeral procession which 
advanced slowly along the same road the 
President had travelled, in 1861, everywhere 
received with demonstrations that were ex- 
pressions of the depth and intensity of pop- 
ular feeling? Shall we show the reader the 
catafalque first placed under the dome of 
the Capitol in Washington; in the great hall 
of the Treasury at Baltimore; in the same 
room in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 
in which Mr. Lincoln had said that, if God 
so willed, he would willingly die for the 
double cause of his country and liberty; in the 
City Hall, New York; and, in these several 
places, the long procession of citizens in 
mourning garb filed numberless and in silence 



io6 ^be Xincoln tribute :©ook 

before the open casket, which they wet 
with their tears and buried in wreaths of 
flowers ? 

" Who has not read descriptions of this sol- 
emn and sorrowful spectacle of heart-felt grief 
the most sincere, the most universal, the 
most impressive that has ever been seen. As 
the joy of the day before, so the grief of the 
night that followed it was boundless. 

" In writing these lines on the obsequies of 
the plain and modest Lincoln, by contrast, 
the thought came to me of the funeral of the 
proud monarch Louis XIV. No king, no 
prince, no man of any station was ever so 
universally mourned as 'I'honnete Abe de 
rOuest'; over him the New World and the 
Old have mingled their tears. What a con- 
cert of regrets and pious tributes in all lands 
and tongues ! What a just and glorious 
crown of immortelles, but, alas, placed late 
upon this noble brow ! In very truth Lincoln 
was, take him for all in all, a great citizen, 
a truly noble and Christian statesman, the 
faithful and disinterested defender and the 



XTributes to Xincoln 107 

worthy martyr of the best of causes, the cause 
of liberty and humanity! , . ." 

To some there may be monotony in the 
chorus of praise which is raised in the con- 
cluding pages of this volume, but, for our 
part, we drink in insatiably these glowing 
eulogies that come straight from the heart 
and go straight to the heart, and, best of all, 
are satisfying as only truth itself can be. 
With such tributes must be counted these 
words of Mr. Choate : 

THE MOURNERS 

" He lived to see his work indorsed by an 
overwhelming majority of his countrymen. 
In his second inaugural address, pronounced 
just forty days before his death, there is a 
single passage which well displays his in- 
domitable will and at the same time his deep 
religious feeling, his sublime charity to the 
enemies of his country, and his broad and 
catholic humanity : 

" ' If we shall suppose that American slavery 
is one of those offences which in the providence 



io8 Zbc Xincoln ^Tribute JSooft 

of God must needs come, but which, having 
continued through the appointed time. He now 
wills to remove, and that He gives to both 
North and South this terrible war, as the woe 
due to those by whom the offence came, shall 
we discern therein any departure from those 
divine attributes which the believers in a 
living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly 
do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass 
away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until 
all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's two 
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil 
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood 
drawn with the lash shall be paid with another 
drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand 
years ago, so still it must be said, " the judg- 
ments of the Lord are true and righteous 
altogether." ' 

" ' With malice toward none, with charity for 
all, with firmness in the right as God gives 
us to see the right — let us strive on to finish 
the work we are in: to bind up the nation's 
wounds; to care for him who shall have borne 



tributes to Xlncoln 109 

the battle and for his widow and his orphan — 
to do all which may achieve and cherish a 
just and lasting peace among ourselves, and 
with all nations,' 

" When he died by the madman's hand in 
the supreme hour of victory, the vanquished 
lost their best friend, and the human race one 
of its noblest examples; and all the friends 
of freedom and justice, in whose cause he 
lived and died, joined hands as mourners at 
his grave." 

'* The greatest tributes which Lincoln has 

received were the intense grief felt at the 

time of his death, and the affirmation by 

posterity of the judgment formed of his 

qualities in that moment of sorrow." 

Joseph H. Choate in The Writings of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, vol. i., pp. 1 18-120. Reprinted 
by permission of the author and Thomas Y. 
Crowell & Company. 

VICTORY AND FATE 
" A few days more brought the surrender of 



no ^be Xlncoln Ztibutc :i6ooft 

Lee's army, and peace was assured. The 
people of the North were wild with joy. 
Everywhere festive guns were booming, bells 
pealing, the churches ringing with thanks- 
givings, and jubilant multitudes thronging 
the thoroughfares, when suddenly the news 
flashed over the land that Abraham Lincoln 
had been murdered. The people were stunned 
by the blow. Then a wail of sorrow went up 
such as America had never heard before. 
Thousands of Northern households grieved as 
if they had lost their dearest member. Many 
a Southern man cried out in his heart that 
his people had been robbed of their best friend 
in their humiliation and distress, when Abra- 
ham Lincoln was struck down. It was as if 
the tender affection which his countrymen 
bore him had inspired all nations with a 
common sentiment. All civilized mankind 
stood mourning around the coffin of the dead 
President. Many of those, here and abroad, 
who not long before had ridiculed and reviled 
him were among the first to hasten on with 
their flowers of eulogy, and in that universal 



Ztibntce to Xincoln m 

chorus of lamentation and praise there was 
not a voice that did not tremble with genuine 
emotion. Never since Washington's death 
had there been such unanimity of judgment 
as to a man's virtues and greatness; and even 
Washington's death, although his name was 
held in greater reverence, did not touch so 
sympathetic a chord in the people's hearts. 
" Nor can it be said that this was owing to 
the tragic character of Lincoln's end. It is 
true, the death of this gentlest and most 
merciful of rulers by the hand of a mad fanatic 
was well apt to exalt him beyond his merits 
in the estimation of those who loved him, 
and to make his renown the object of pecul- 
iarly tender solicitude. But it is also true 
that the verdict pronounced upon him in 
those days has been affected little by time, 
and that historical inquiry has served rather 
to increase than to lessen the appreciation 
of his virtues, his abilities, his services. 
Giving the fullest measure of credit to his 
great ministers, — to Seward for his conduct 
of foreign affairs, to Chase for the management 



112 Zbc Xincoln G:i:il)utc JSook 

of the finances under terrible difficulties, to 
Stanton for the performance of his tremendous 
task as war secretary, — and readily acknow- 
ledging that without the skill and fortitude 
of the great commanders, and the heroism of 
the soldiers and sailors under them, success 
could not have been achieved, the historian 
still finds that Lincoln's judgment and will 
were by no means governed by those around 
him ; that the most important steps were owing 
to his initiative; that his was the deciding and 
directing mind; and that it was pre-eminently 
he whose sagacity and whose character en- 
listed for the administration in its struggles 
the countenance, the sympathy, and the 
support of the people. It is found, even, 
that his judgment on military matters was 
astonishingly acute, and that the advice and 
instructions he gave to the generals com- 
manding in the field would not seldom have 
done honor to the ablest of them. History, 
therefore, without overlooking, or palliating, 
or excusing any of his shortcomings or mis 
takes, continues to place him foremost amoni 




Crtbutcs to Xincoln 113 

the saviours of the Union and the liberators 
of the slave. More than that, it awards to 
him the merit of having accomplished what 
but few political philosophers would have 
recognized as possible, — of leading the re- 
public through four years of furious civil 
conflict without any serious detriment to its 
free institutions." 

Carl Schurz in The Writings of Abraham 
Lincoln, vol. i., pp. 69-71. Reprinted with 
the permission of the author and Houghton, 
Mifflin, & Company. 

Among the lamentations that rose with the 
news of Lincoln's death none voices a pro- 
founder grief than Walt Whitman's elegy: 



O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is 

done, 
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize 

we sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all 

exulting, 

8 



114 ^be ILincoln Qlrlbute :©ooft 

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel 
grim and daring; 
But O heart! heart! heart! 
O the bleeding drops of red, 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the 

bells; 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the 

bugle trills, 
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for 

you the shores a-crowding. 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their 
eager faces turning; 
Here Captain! dear father! 
This arm beneath your head! 

It is some dream that on the deck 
You 've fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale 
and still, 

My father does not feel my arm, he has no 
pulse nor will. 

The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voy- 
age closed and done, 

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with 
object won; 



XTcibutes to Xlncoln 115 

Exult O shores, and ring O bells! 
But I, with mournful tread, 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

Walt Whitman. 

The depth of the grief that swept over 
the world on the news of Lincoln's death 
was in no manner more conspicuously- 
shown than in the way it engulfed even those 
who had been most bitterly opposed to him 
during his life. The London Times and Punch 
had been so opposed, sparing no pains to 
hold him up to ridicule ; yet in the latter paper 
appeared shortly after the tragedy the fol- 
lowing recantation, a poem by Tom Taylor, 
who himself had been guilty of much ungener- 
ous abuse. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Tom Taylor 

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, 
You, who with mocking pencil wrote to trace, 
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, 
His length of shambling limb, his furrowed 
face. 



ii6 Zbc Uincoln tribute JBooft 

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, 

bristling hair, 
His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease. 
His lack of all we prize as debonair. 
Of power or will to shine, of art to please; 

You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's 

laugh, 
Judging each step as though the way was plain, 
Reckless, so it could point its paragraph 
Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain: 

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding- 
sheet 
The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew. 
Between the mourners at his head and feet, 
Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you ? 

Yes: he had lived to shame me from my sneer. 
To lame my pencil and confute my pen; 
To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men. 

My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, 
Noting how to occasion's height he rose; 
How his quaint wit made home-truth seem 

more true; 
How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows. 



tributes to Xfncoln in 

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be; 
How, in good fortune and in ill, the same; 
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he. 
Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. 

He went about his work,— such work as few 
Ever had laid on head and heart and hand,— 
As one who knows, where there 's a task to do, 
Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace 
command ; 

Who trusts the strength will with the burden 

grow. 
That God makes instruments to work his will, 
U but that will we can arrive to know, 
Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. 

So he went forth to battle on the side 
That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, 
As in his peasant boyhood he had phed 
His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting 
mights; 

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, 
The iron bark, that turns the lumberer's axe, 
The rapid that o'erbears the boatman's toil. 
The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderers' 
tracks, 



ii8 ^bc Xincoln tribute 3i3ooft 

The ambushed Indian, the prowling bear, — 

Such were the deeds that helped his youth to 
train : 

Rough culture, but such trees large fruit may- 
bear. 

If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. 

So he grew up, a destined work to do, 
And lived to do it: four long suffering years' 
Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report lived through, 
And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, 

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, 
And took both with the same unwavering 

mood; 
Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, 
And seemed to touch the goal from where he 

stood, 

A felon hand, between the goal and him. 
Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest, 
And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim. 
Those gaunt, long laboring limbs were laid 
to rest! 

The words of mercy were upon his lips, 
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen. 
When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse 
To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to 
men. 



^Tributes to Xincoln hq 

The old world and the new, from sea to sea, 
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame — 
Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat 

high; 
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came! 

A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck 

before 
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt 
If more of horror or disgrace they bore; 
But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly 

out. 

Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife, 
Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly 

striven ; 
And with the martyr's crown crownest a life 
With much to praise, little to be forgiven. 

Punch, 1865. 

Noah Brooks, in his Hfe of Lincoln, thus 
speaks of the rare combination of qualities 
which went to make up his unique personality. 

THE FLOWER OF ALL THAT IS WORTH- 
ILY AMERICAN 

"The author of this brief biography has 
imperfectly carried out his purpose if he has 



I20 Cbe Xlncoln C^ributc JBool? 

failed to show how the character of Lincoln 
was developed and shaped by his early training ; 
how he was raised up and fitted, in the obscure 
seclusion of humble life, by the providence of 
God, for a special and peculiar service; how 
he became the type, flower, and representa- 
^ tive of all that is worthily American; how in 

him the commonest of human traits were 
blended with an all-embracing charity and 
the highest human wisdom; and how, with 
single-hearted devotion to the right, he lived 
unselfishly, void of selfish personal ambition, 
and, dying tragically, left a name to be re- 
membered with love and honor as one of the 
best and greatest of mankind." 

Abraham Lincoln, by Noah Brooks, pp. 460- 
461. 

It was not the melting mood that dominated 
Disraeli's nature, but there may be found 
something of genuine feeling in his words upon 
the death of Lincoln: 

DISRAELI'S TRIBUTE 

" But in the character of his victim, and in 



zrributes to Uincoln 121 

the very accessories of his almost latest mo- 
ments, there is something so homely and so 
innocent, that it takes the subject, as it were, 
out of the pomp of history, and out of the 
ceremonial of diplomacy. It touches the 
heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic 
sentiments of mankind," 

From the speech of Disraeli, delivered in 
the House of Commons, London, May i, 1865, 
as quoted in Lincolniana, Boston, 1865. 

Julia Ward Howe, who before had sounded 
the bugle call to arms, also turned to the 
more sorrowful task of mourning the dead 
President. 

JULIA WARD HOWE'S ELEGY 

Crown his blood-stained pillow 

With a victor's palm; 
Life's receding billow 

Leaves eternal calm. 

At the feet Almighty 

Lay this gift sincere; 
Of a purpose weighty, 

And a record clear. 



XTbe Xincoln ^Tribute JBooft 

With deliverance freighted 
Was this passive hand, 

And this heart, high-fated. 
Would with love command. 



Let him rest serenely 
In a nation's care, 

Where her waters queenly- 
Make the West most fair. 



In the greenest meadow 

That the prairies show, 
Let his marble's shadow 

Give all men to know: 

"Our First Hero, living. 

Made his country free; 
Heed the Second's giving, 

Death for liberty." 

Poetical Tributes to the Memory of Abraham 
Lincoln, pp. 15-16, Philadelphia, 1865. 

It was not until after the assassination that 
the whole country realized the manner of man 
it had lost. As Miss Tarbell says: 



tributes to Xtncoln 123 

THE AWAKENING 

" The first inevitable result of the emotion 
which swept over the earth at Lincoln's death 
was to enroll him among martyrs and heroes. 
Men forgot that they had despised him, 
jeered at him, doubted him. They forgot 
his mistakes, forgot his plodding caution, 
forgot his homely ways. They saw now, with 
the vision which an awful and sudden disaster 
often gives, the simple, noble outlines on 
which he had worked. 

" They realized how completely he had sunk 
every partisan and personal consideration, 
every non-essential, in the tasks which he had 
set for himself— to prevent the extension of 
slavery, to save the Union. 

" They realized how, while they had forgot- 
ten everything in disputes over this man, this 
measure, this event, he had seen only the 
two great objectives of the struggle. They 
saw how slowly, but surely, he had educated 
them to feel the vital importance of these 
objects, had resolved their partisan warfare 
into a moral struggle. The wisdom of his 



124 ^be ^Lincoln XLtibntc :sSool? 

words, the sincerity of his acts, the stead- 
fastness of his life were clear to them at last." 

The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Ida M. 
Tarbell, vol. ii., p. 261, Doubleday, Page, & 
Company, New York, 1889. 

Among the poems written at that time was 
the following ode by Richard H. Stoddard, 
which we quote in part: 



AN HORATIAN ODE 

Peace! Let the long procession come, 
For hark! — the mournful, muffled drum- 

The trumpets wail afar, — 

And see! the awful car! 



Peace! Let the sad procession go, 
While cannon boom and bells toll slow: 

And go, thou sacred car, 

Bearing our woe afar! 

Go, darkly borne, from State to State, 
Whose loyal, sorrowing cities wait 
To honor all they can 
The dust of that good man! 



XLbc Xincoln tribute JBook 125 

Go, grandly borne, with such a train 
As greatest kings might die to gain : 

The just, the wise, the brave 

Attend thee to the grave! 

And you, the soldiers of our wars, 
Bronzed veterans, grim with noble scars, 

Salute him once again, 

Your late commander — slain! 

Yes, let your tears, indignant, fall, 
But leave your muskets on the wall: 

Your country needs you now 

Beside the forge, the plough! 

And you amid the master-race, 
Who seem so strangely out of place, 

Know ye who cometh ? He 

Who hath declared ye free! 

So sweetly, sadly, sternly goes 
The fallen to his last repose: 

Beneath no mighty dome, 

But in his modest home: 

The churchyard where his children rest. 
The quiet spot that suits him best: 

There shall his grave be made, 

And there his bones be laid ! 



126 ^be Xincoln c:clbute 3Book 

And there his countrymen shall come, 
With memory proud, with pity dumb, 

And strangers far and near. 

For many and many a year! 

For many a year and many an age, 
While history on her ample page 

The virtues shall enroll 

Of that paternal soul! 

From An Horatian Ode, by Richard H. 
Stoddard, quoted in Poetical Tributes to the 
Memory of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 32-34, Phila- 
delphia, 1865. 

The opinions of abstract thinkers are always 
interesting whether in assent to, or dissent 
from, the popular feeling. In the following 
quotation, John Stuart Mill's voice is added 
to the general chorus of praise: 

JOHN STUART MILL ON LINCOLN'S 
DEATH 

" Dear Sir: 

" I had scarcely received your note of April 
8, so full of calm joy in the splendid prospect 
now opening to your country, and through it 



tributes to Xfncoln 127 

to the world, when the news came that an 
atrocious crime had struck down the great 
citizen who had afforded so noble an example 
of the qualities befitting the first magistrate 
of a free people, and who, in the most trying 
circumstances, had gradually won, not only 
the admiration, but almost the personal affec- 
tion of all who love freedom or appreciate 
simplicity and uprightness. But the loss is 
ours, not his. It was impossible to have 
wished him a better end, than to add the 
crown of martyrdom to his other honors, 
and to live in the memory of a great nation 
as those only live who have not only labored 
for their country, but died for it." 

Letter from John Stuart Mill, quoted in 
Liiicolniana, p. 293, Boston, 1865. 



The deep tragedy of Lincoln's taking-off 
was intensified by the feeling that, after 
harassed years in which our War President 
had borne upon his own shoulders the burdens 
of the nation's troubles, and when victory 



Z2S tTbe Hincotn tribute :S3oofi 

had come at last, he should not have been 
permitted to enjoy the fruits of his labors 
and to draw his breath in peace for a season. 
It is this idea that underlies these verses of 
Whittier: 

A TRIBUTE FROM WHITTIER 

The weary form, that rested not, 

Save in a martyr's grave; 
The care-worn face that none forgot, 

Turned to the kneeling slave. 

We rest in peace, where his sad eyes 

Saw peril, strife, and pain; 
His was the awful sacrifice. 

And ours, the priceless gain. 

To the American abroad the news of Lin- 
coln's death must have brought a peculiar 
sorrow. Mr. Motley, at that time ambassador 
to Austria, wrote as follows to Secretary 
Seward : 

J. LOTHROP MOTLEY'S LETTER 

" I know that one should avoid the language 
of exaggeration, or over-excited enthusiasm, 



tributes to Xtncoln 129 

so natural when a man eminent in station, 
mental abilities, and lofty characteristics is 
suddenly taken away; yet I am not afraid to 
express the opinion that the name of Abra- 
ham Lincoln will be cherished, so long as we 
have a history, as one of the wisest, purest, and 
noblest magistrates, as one of the greatest 
benefactors to the human race, that have 
ever lived. 

" I believe that the foundation of his whole 
character was a devotion to duty. To borrow 
a phrase from his brief and simple but most 
eloquent inaugural address of this year, it was 
* his firmness in the right as God gave him to 
see the right ' which enabled him to discharge 
the functions of his great office, in one of the 
most terrible periods of the world's history, 
with such rare sagacity, patience, cheerfulness 
and courage. And God, indeed, gave him to 
see the right, and he needs no nobler epitaph 
than those simple words from his own lips, 

'• So much firmness with such gentleness of 
heart, so much logical acuteness with such 
almost childlike simplicity and ingenuousness 



I30 XTbe Xlncoln XTcibute 3Booli 

of nature, so much candor to weigh the wisdom 
of others, with so much tenacity to retain his 
own judgment, were rarely before united in 
one individual. 

" Never was such vast political power placed 
in purer hands ; never did a heart remain more 
humble and unsophisticated after the highest 
prizes of earthly ambition had been obtained." 

Letter of J. Lothrop Motley to Wni. H. 
Seward, quoted in Tributes of the Nations * 
to Abraham Lincoln, Washington, 1867. 

While certain of the English papers had 
vied with each other in unfriendly criticism, 
such was not the universal attitude by any 
means. The attitude of the friendly English- 
man is exemplified in an article appearing in 
the London Daily News at that time: 



J Though made up largely of official con- 
dolences from other nations, this rare book 
contains much that is curious and interesting 
to all interested in Lincolniana. 



CCributes to Xtncoln 131 

BRITISH APPRECIATION 

" In all time to come, not among Americans 
only, but among all who think of manhood as 
more than rank, and set worth above display, 
the name of Abraham Lincoln will be held in 
reverence. Rising from amongst the poorest 
of the people, winning his slow way upward by 
sheer hard work, preserving in every succes- 
sive stage a character unspotted and a name 
untainted, securing a wider respect as he be- 
came better known, never pretending to more 
than he was, nor being less than he professed 
himself, he was at length, for very singleness 
of heart and uprightness of conduct, because 
all felt that they could trust him utterly, and 
would desire to be guided by his firmness, 
courage, and sense, placed in the chair of 
President at the turning point of his nation's 
history. A life so true, rewarded by a dignity 
so majestic, was defence enough against the 
petty shafts of mahce which party spirit, 
violent enough to hght a civil war, aimed 
against him. The lowly callings he had 



132 Zbc Xincoln (Tribute :©ooft 

first pursued became his titles to greater 

respect among those whose respect was worth 

having; the httle external rusticities only 

showed more brightly, as the rough matrix 

the golden ore, the true dignity of his nature. 

Never was any one, set in such high place, 

and surrounded with so many motives of 

furious detraction, so little impeached of 

aught blameworthy." 

From The London Daily News, i quoted in 
The Lincoln Memorial, pp. 252-253, New 
York, 1865. 

Still more enthusiastic is the tone of the 
following poem : 

AN ENGLISH MEMORIAL WREATH 

An end at last ! The echoes of the war — 
The weary war beyond the Western waves — 

Die in the distance. Freedom's rising star 
Beacons above a hundred thousand graves; 



1 Probably from the pen of Mr. Robinson, 
an ardent anti-slavery man, and through the 
years of the War the managing editor of The 
London Daily News. 



tributes to Xincoln i33 

The graves of heroes who have won the fight, 
Who in the storming of the stubborn town 
Have rung the marriage peal of might and 
right, 
And scaled the cHffs and cast the dragon 
down. 
P^ans of armies thrill across the sea. 

Till Europe answers — "Let the struggle 
cease, 
The bloody page is turned; the next may be 
For ways of pleasantness and paths of 



peace 



The pilot of the people through the strife, 

With his strong purpose turning scorn to 
praise, 
E'en at the close of battle, reft of life. 

And fair inheritance of quiet days. 
Defeat and triumph found him calm and just. 

He showed how clemency should temper 
power, 
And dying left to future times in trust 

The memory of his brief victorious hour. 

O'ermastered by the irony of fate. 

The last and greatest martyr of his cause; 

Slain like Achilles at the Sc^an gate. 

He saw the end, and fixed the purer laws. 



134 tTbe ^Lincoln tribute Moo\{ 

May these endure and, as his work, attest 
The glory of his honest heart and hand — 

The simplest, and the bravest, and the best — 
The Moses and the Cromwell of his land. 

Too late the pioneers of modern spite, 
Awe-stricken by the universal gloom. 

See his name lustrous in Death's sable night, 
And offer tardy tribute at his tomb. » 

But we who have been with him all the while. 
Who knew his worth and loved him long ago, 

Rejoice that in the circuit of our isle 

There is no room at last for Lincoln's foe. 

John Nichol in the London Spectator, 
quoted in Poetical Tributes to the Memory of 
Abraham Lincoln, pp. 302-303, Philadelphia, 
1865. 

Not infrequently the great of all ages have 



1 Doubtless the reference here is to the 
London Times and those who sympathized 
with its attitude toward the South during the 
Civil War. The author of the memorial 
verses above quoted may also have had in 
mind the ridicule and abuse Punch heaped 
upon Lincoln, and the late recantation by 
Tom Taylor, printed in its pages in 1865, and 
reprinted on pages 11 5-1 19 of the present 
volume. 



^Tributes to Xincoln 135 

been in disfavor with their own world; their 
thoughts and words and, above all, their 
deeds are too daring to find ready accept- 
ance. It is only when the event has proven 
their truth that men accord to them the 
tardy meed of praise. 

THE TARDY PRAISE 
" As the state of society in which Abraham 
Lincoln grew up passes away, the world will 
read with increasing wonder of the man who, 
not only of the humblest origin, but remain- 
ing the simplest and most unpretending of 
citizens, was raised to a position of power 
unprecedented in our history; who was the 
gentlest and most peace-loving of mortals, 
unable to see any creature suffer without a 
pang in his own breast, and suddenly found 
himself called to conduct the greatest and 
bloodiest of our wars; who wielded the power 
of government when stern resolution and re- 
lentless force were the order of the day and 
then won and ruled the popular mind and 
heart by the tender sympathies of his nature; 



1 36 XLbc Xlncoln tribute JBooft 

who was a cautious conservative by tempera- 
ment and mental habit, and led the most 
sudden and sweeping social revolution of our 
time; who, preserving his homely speech and 
rustic manner even in the most conspicuous 
position of that period, drew upon himself the 
scoffs of polite society, and then thrilled the 
soul of mankind with utterances of wonderful 
beauty and grandeur; who, in his heart the 
best friend of the defeated South, was mur- 
dered because a crazy fanatic took him for 
its most cruel enemy ; who, while in power, was 
beyond measure lampooned and maligned by 
sectional passion and an excited party spirit, 
and around whose bier friend and foe gathered 
to praise him — which they have since never 
ceased to do — as one of the greatest of Ameri- 
cans and the best of men." 

Carl Schurz in The Writings of Abraham 
Lincoln, vol. i., pp. 75-76. Reprinted with 
the permission of the author and Houghton, 
Mifflin & Company. 

There is a solemn beauty in the lament of 
Bryant's muse over the dead President. 



^Tributes to Xlncoln 137 

THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

O slow to smite and swift to spare, 

Gentle and merciful and just! 
Who, in the fear of God, didst bear 

The sword of power — a nation's trust, 

In sorrow by thy bier we stand, 

Amid the awe that hushes all. 
And speak the anguish of a land 

That shook with horror at thy fall. 

Thy task is done — the bound are free; 

We bear thee to an honored grave. 
Whose noblest monument shall be 

The broken fetters of the slave. 

Pure was thy life ; its bloody close 

Hath placed thee with the sons of Hght, 

Among the noble host of those 

Who perished in the cause of right. 

William Cullen Bryant. 

Of the laments over Lincoln's death none 
was more deeply felt than Whitman's "O 
Captain! My Captain!" and the same heart- 
felt sorrow is in these words from the same pen : 



r 



138 XLbc ^Lincoln ZxiDntc asooh 

THE GRANDEST FIGURE OF THE NINE- 
TEENTH CENTURY 

' ' Dear to Democracy, to the very last ! And 
among the paradoxes generated by America 
not the least curious was that spectacle of all 
the kings and queens and emperors of the 
earth, many from remote distances, sending 
tributes of condolence and sorrow in memory 
of a man raised through the commonest aver- 
age of life — a rail-splitter and flat-boat man! 
Considered from contemporary points of view 
— who knows what the future may decide? — 
and from the points of view of current De- 
mocracy and the Union (the only thing like 
passion or infatuation in the man was the 
passion for the Union of these States), Abra- 
ham Lincoln seems to me the grandest figure 
yet, on all the crowded canvas of the nine- 
teenth century." 



Walt Whitman in Reminiscences of Abraham 
Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time, 
ed. Allen Thorndike Rice, pp. 473, 475, New 
York, 1886. 



tTrtbutes to Xincoln 139 

This fine passage, the last of the prose 
tributes we shall quote, is from the concluding 
pages of John G. Nicolay's Life: 

JOHN G. NICOLAY'S TRIBUTE 

" With faith and justice and generosity he 
conducted for four long years a civil war whose 
frontiers stretched from the Potomac to the 
Rio Grande; whose soldiers numbered a mil- 
lion men on each side. . . . The labor, the 
thought, the responsibihty, the strain of 
intellect and anguish of soul that he gave to 
this great task, who can measure? 

"The sincerity of the fathers of the Republic 
was impugned; he justified them. The Dec- 
laration of Independence was called a ' string 
of glittering generalities' and a 'self-evident 
lie'; he refuted the aspersion. The Consti- 
tution was perverted; he corrected the error. 
The flag was insulted ; he redressed the offence. 
The government was assailed; he restored its 
authority. Slavery thrust the sword of civil 
war at the heart of the nation; he crushed 



140 ^be Xincoln Eribute :fiSooft 

slavery, and cemented the purified Union in 
new and stronger bonds. . . . 

"What but lifetime schooling in disappoint- 
ment; what but the pioneer's self-reliance 
and freedom from prejudice; what but the 
patient faith, the clear perceptions of natural 
right, the unwarped sympathy and unbounding 
charity of this man with spirit so humble and 
soul so great, could have carried him through 
the labors he wrought to the victory he 
attained? . . . 

' ' Patri otism can in no way be more effectively 
cultivated than by studying and commemo- 
rating the achievements and virtues of our 
great men — the men who have lived and died 
for the nation, who have advanced its pros- 
perity, increased its power, added to its glory. 
In our brief history the United States can 
boast of many great men, and the achieve- 
ment by its sons of many great deeds ; and if 
we accord the first rank to Washington as 
founder, so we must unhesitatingly give to 
Lincoln the second place as preserver and re- 
generator of American liberty. So far, how- 



tributes to Xtncoln 141 

ever, from being opposed or subordinated 
either to the other, the popular heart has 
already canonized these two as twin heroes 
in our national pantheon, as twin stars in the 
firmament of our national fame." 

A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln, by John 
G. Nicolay, VV- 554-555, The Century Com- j 
pany. 
\ As a final tribute to Lincoln we cannot do • 
better than set down here the threnody from 
Lowell's Commemoration Ode, which was 
written in the year of the President's death. 

COMMEMORATION ODE 

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 

Whom late the Nation he had led. 
With ashes on her head, 
Wept with the passion of an angry grief: 
Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored 
urn. 
Nature, they say, doth dote, 
And cannot make a man 
Save on some worn-out plan, 
Repeating us by rote : 



142 ^be Hincoln (Tribute Book 

For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and 
true. 
How beautiful to see 

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 

Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; 

One whose meek flock the people joyed to be. 
Not lured by any cheat of birth, 
But by his clear-grained human worth. 

And brave old wisdom of sincerity! 

They knew that outward grace is dust; 
They could not choose but trust 

In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 
And supple-tempered will 

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and 
thrust. 
His was no lonely mountain peak of mind, 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined. 
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind. 

Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest 
stars. 
Nothing of Europe here, 

Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, 
Ere any names of Serf and Peer 



^rtbutc0 to OLtncoln us 

Could Nature's equal scheme deface 

And thwart her genial will; 

Here was a type of the true elder race, 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us 
face to face. 

I praise him not ; it were too late ; 
And some innative weakness there must be 
In him who condescends to victory- 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait 

Safe in himself as in a fate. 

So always firmly he ; 

He knew to bide his time, 

And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 

Till the wise years decide. 

Great captains with their guns and drums, 

Disturb our judgment for the hour, 

But at last silence comes; 

These are all gone, and, standing like a 
tower. 

Our children shall behold his fame, 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not 
blame. 

New birth of our new soil, the first American. 

Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration, 
July 21, 1865, by James Russell Lowell. 



irnbei of Hittbors (Sluoteb 

Arnold, Isaac N., 44-46 

Binns, Henry Bryan, 46-48, 65-69, 74-77 

Brooks, Noah, 71-72, 1 19-120 

Brown, W. Garrott, 97-99 

Bryant, William Cullen, 137 

Choate, Joseph H., 32-33. 59-63, 73-74, 9°, 

92-93, loo-ioi, 107-109 
Daily News, The [London ], 131-132 
Davis, David, 28-29 
Disraeli, 120-12 1 
Douglass, Frederick, 94-95 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 54-55 
Herndon, William H., 19-20, 23, 42-43 

70-71, 80-81, 86-88 
Hill, Frederick Trevor, 32, 36-40, 81-83 
Holland, J. G., 34-36 
Howe, Julia Ward, 121-122 
Lowell, James Russell, 1 41-143 
Mill, John Stuart, 126-127 
Morgan, James, 79 
Motley, J. Lothrop, 128-130 
145 



146 ITnDcx ot autbors (StuotcD 

Nichol, John, 132-134 

Nicolay, John G., 24-25, 63-65, 84, 139-141 

Pascal, C6sar, 104-107 

Robinson, , see note, p. 132 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 84-85 

Rothschild, Alonzo, 51-54, 55-56, 77-78 

Schurz, Carl, 21-22, 91-92, 102-104, 109-113, 

135-136 
Spectator, The [London], 132-134 
Stoddard, Richard H., 124-126 
Stoddard, William O., 20 
Tarbell, Ida, 26-27, 122-124 
Taylor, Tom, 11 5-1 19 

Weik, Jesse W., see Herndon, William H, 
White, Horace, 57-58 
Whitman, Walt, 113-115, 138 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 128 
Wright, R. R., 96-97 



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